In the Nick of Time
by aehawthorne
Summary: 10 years ago, Kara Zor-El crash landed on Earth, twenty-four years too late to fulfill her task of protecting her cousin in their new life on Earth. Eventually, she was found by Nora and Henry Allen, who took her in and raised her alongside their son, Barry. Now, the two siblings have taken it upon themselves to protect Central Central City from a host of new and terrible threats
1. Prologue

The launch bay doors slid slowly open, blinding Kara with a flash of Rao's brilliant red light. Her heart still ached with the sorrow of leaving her parents behind, knowing that they would die. Tears still stung her eyes, but one thing she would not allow herself to be was afraid. Her cousin Kal-El was only a baby, and it fell to her to guide and protect him in their new life on the planet called Earth. Her parents- and Kal-El's- had been sure to impress upon her the enormity of the responsibility she faced, the fact that she would have to be both cousin and parent to Kal-El from now on, and teach him Kryptonian ways. Kara tried not to think too hard about the concept of teaching her cousin the ways of a people that would be dead by the time they reached their new home.

Squinting against the bright light flooding the launch bay, Kara could make out Kal-El's pod, just ahead of her own, its hull gleaming silver in Rao's ruddy light. As she watched, its engines fired, and it sped forward, out through the open doors of the launch bay and into open air. Kara's pod rumbled and shook as its own engines came alive, launching itself and its passenger out into space, following after Kal-El's pod as if in a game of tag. Her pod was self piloting, which left Kara with nothing to do but watch and weep as Krypton, her home, collapsed and crumbled around and beneath her.

With the breakneck speed at which the pods were moving, it wasn't long before they broke the atmosphere and went hurtling out into the cold black vacuum of space. They were making good time, and Kara began to believe that their journey would go smoothly and they would arrive at their new home without mishap. Then disaster struck. Just behind Kara, Krypton exploded, the last gasp of a dying world. The shockwave from the blast struck Kara's pod, sending it tumbling end over end. As she tumbled, she caught glimpses through the window of Kal-El's pod continuing uninterrupted on its course, dwindling into a smaller and smaller shape as it got further and further away. Kara felt a twist in her stomach as she realized that she'd been knocked toward the opening to the Phantom Zone that lurked like a waiting, hungry maw in the space between Krypton and its nearest planetary neighbor. As she felt the inescapable gravity of the Phantom Zone opening pull her backwards toward it, deep sorrow overwhelmed Kara. She'd never make it to Earth, wouldn't be there to protect and guide her cousin. She had failed in her task, failed before she'd even begun.

"Kal!" she cried out in a voice raw and ragged with despair as she watched his pod disappear from her sight. Then all she knew was the cold and the darkness and the silence of the Phantom Zone.

The next thing Kara knew was blue sky and sunlight. _Yellow_ sunlight. She'd made it to Earth at last. Perhaps she hadn't failed. Perhaps she could still fulfill the task her parents had placed upon her in their final moments.

Her pod rattled and shook as it plummeted toward the ground far below her. A crossbreeze shoved it sideways, and Kara cried out, but then she clamped her mouth shut, remembering herself, remembering the promise she'd made in those moments before her breakneck flight from Krypton- she would not be afraid.

That promise became a little harder to stick to when her pod finally impacted with the ground, crashing through tree branches and plowing a deep furrow in the ground behind it. When it finally came to a stop, Kara opened the hatch and sat for a moment, the riot of noise and color and light all around her leaving her dazed and disoriented after so long spent in the cold, silent blackness of the Phantom Zone. Then she pushed herself to her feet, climbed out of her wrecked pod, and headed toward the buildings she'd caught glimpses of on the way down- rows of houses with neatly manicured lawns, occasionally separated by a fence or a hedge or trees. If Kara remembered her lessons about Earth correctly, this was what was known as a suburb, a residential area located just outside of the nearest population center. Maybe someone here would know something about her cousin, or know how to help her find him.

As Kara wandered the streets, however, she came to realize what a foolish plan this was. It was late afternoon, with the shadows lengthening into evening, and the streets and sidewalks were silent and empty. At this time of day, it seemed, the residents of this suburb were all in their homes, and Kara had no idea how to gain entry to one of those homes, or what she would say if she did. She had no external features that distinguished her from a random human off the street, and if she tried to tell someone that she was an alien who'd crash landed here and was looking for her cousin who was also an alien, they'd just think she was crazy.

Feeling despair overwhelm her, Kara sat down on the porch steps of the nearest house, put her head in her hands, and started to cry, sobs shaking her shoulders and rattling her entire frame. After a while, in the midst of all her tears, she heard voices inside the house, just behind the door- a man and a woman, discussing something in low voices. A moment later, their conversation came to an abrupt halt as they apparently arrived at some consensus unknown to Kara. Then she heard the door open behind her and the woman's voice said "Oh, honey, what's wrong?" Kara's only response was to cry harder, the unexpected kindness striking her in the heart.

"Oh, honey," the woman murmured, and the next thing Kara knew she was sitting beside her on the porch steps and putting an arm around her shoulders. Kara glanced over at her. She had red hair and smile lines around her eyes, her features folded into an expression of maternal concern. In that moment, Kara knew, somehow, that this woman had children- maybe one, maybe more than one. It didn't matter. She could not have more clearly been a mother.

"What's your name?' the woman asked in a gentle, patient voice.

"Kara," Kara managed to answer between sobs.

"Oh, that's a beautiful name," the woman said, offering Kara a smile. Kara tried her best to return it, but had a difficult time of it. There were a few minutes of silence where the woman just sat with Kara, her arm still around her, and waited for her crying to quiet. Even once it did, she didn't say anything right away.

"Where on Earth did you come from, Kara?" she finally asked. Kara almost laughed. She hadn't come from Earth at all, but how in Rao's name was she supposed to explain that?

"I can't really tell you," she mumbled. "I'd have to show you."

"What was that?" the woman asked.

"I said, I'd have to show you," Kara repeated, louder this time. The woman nodded and followed Kara as she got to her feet.

"Nora, what are you doing?" The man's voice came from behind them. Kara flinched, startled. She hadn't realized that he'd been standing in the doorway this whole time. "You can't just follow her off somewhere!"

"She's a thirteen year old girl, Henry," Nora replied in an exasperated tone. "She's clearly lost, and alone, and scared. What do you think she's going to do to me?" Henry didn't respond. Nora sighed, but there was a certain affection buried in her exasperation toward Henry, who, Kara realized, must be her husband.

"You can come with me, if you're so worried about it," she said. Henry hesitated, shifting uncomfortably from one foot to the other.

"Think about what you would want someone to do if it were Barry in Kara's position," Nora implored. That seemed to convince Henry, as he stepped out onto the porch, closing the front door behind him, and came to stand beside Nora and Kara on the steps.

_Barry must be their child_, Kara thought. Without a word, Kara set off in the direction of her pod's crash landing site, glancing behind her only once to make sure that Nora and Henry were following.

It took a while to reach her pod, during which time Kara's worry over how Nora and Henry would react to it grew and grew. When they reached it at last, at first the sight of it was met only with stunned silence on the part of the two people with Kara. Then Nora asked "Is that what you came here in?" Kara nodded.

"From where?" was Nora's next question. In answer, Kara pointed upward at the dome of the sky, with stars just beginning to speckle it. She spotted a small, faint red one that might have been Rao, but she couldn't be sure.

"Up there?" Nora asked. "As in from space?" Kara nodded again.

"Did you come alone?" Nora asked, concern in her voice now- not concern about a possible invasion, but for Kara's well-being.

"Yes," she said. "I'm alone. I was supposed to come here with my baby cousin, but I got knocked off course, and I don't know where he is now, or if he's even alive-" A strangled cry escaped her, cutting off her words, at the thought of Kal-El being dead. It was too horrible an idea to even contemplate.

"Hey, it's okay," Nora murmured, drawing Kara into her embrace. "We'll help you find him. It's going to be okay, I promise." Kara nodded, her face pressed against Nora's shoulder. Already, she felt better.

"We have to take her in," Nora told her husband. When he started to protest, she said, "Henry, she's a _child_. She's a child, and she's all alone. We can't just leave her to fend for herself. She needs us." Henry conceded to Nora's will rather quickly, which told Kara that his heart hadn't really been in his protests in the first place. Nora nodded once, seeming satisfied.

"Come on," she said to Kara. "Let's get you home."

Barry crept downstairs, carefully avoiding the one step that he knew creaked. He'd been in bed about to fall asleep when he'd heard his parents talking downstairs, followed by the sound of the front door opening and his mother talking to someone outside- a girl, it sounded like- who was crying. Then he'd heard his mother and father get into a brief argument, then the front door had closed and he'd heard footsteps heading down the porch steps and away from the house. There had been about an hour of silence, then his parents had returned to the house with a third person in tow, probably the girl that he'd heard his mother talking to earlier. His curiosity piqued, he'd sat up in bed and waited for everything to quiet down before he'd snuck out of his room and down the stairs to see what was going on. His parents were in the kitchen talking; he caught snatches of their conversation as he passed it- "Hide the pod in the garden shed- We'll have to find some way to forge adoption papers- What are we going to do about school?" None of it made any sense to Barry.

Reaching the living room, Barry stopped and stared. A strange girl was sitting on the couch, her gaze fixed on the entryway. She flinched slightly when Barry entered her view.

"Who're you?" he asked suspiciously.

"I'm Kara," the girl replied in a small, sad voice. She was really pretty, Barry noticed distractedly, with long dirty blonde hair and clear blue eyes.

"What're you doing here?" he asked. Kara just shrugged. She seemed not to know herself.

"Barry, what are you doing in here?" his mother asked from behind him, cutting his conversation with Kara short. "You're supposed to be in bed."

"I heard noises," Barry replied, turning to face her. "And I wanted to see what was going on."

"How many times have I told you that curiosity killed the cat?" his mother asked.

"A lot," Barry admitted. "But you _also_ always told me that the other half of that saying is 'But satisfaction brought it back'"

"I suppose that's true," his mother said with a laugh. After a pause, she said, "Well, Barry, it's sort of hard to explain, but Kara came from outer space-"

"Cool!" Barry interjected.

"And she's alone," his mother went on. "She has no one, so your father and I decided to take her in."

"So I guess," Kara offered, "I'm going to be your sister from now on."

"That's cool with me," Barry said with a shrug. "I've always wanted a sister." Kara brightened at that. Behind Barry, his mother smiled, pleased that this had gone so well.


	2. Ten Years Later

Barry emerged from his apartment building into a downpour. He made a noise of distaste and cursed, not for the first time, the fact that he'd never gotten around to buying an umbrella. In his defense, he hadn't expected to ever actually _need_ one- Central City's climate tended toward sunny and dry.

Ducking through the crowd on the sidewalk, Barry did his best to use the people around him to shield himself from the worst of the rain as he headed for the curb. Once there, he spent the next few minutes trying unsuccessfully to hail a cab, getting splashed by the spray of water from the tires of passing cars for his trouble. By the time a cab finally did pull over, he was soaked through to the skin.

_It's like the universe is_ trying _to mess up my trip,_ he thought grumpily to himself as he climbed inside the cab. Things only got worse from there. The weather must have been affecting the cab driver's mood, because he took offense to Barry's well-meaning and extremely helpful suggestions for alternate routes provided by the great new traffic app he'd just downloaded, grumbling that no skinny kid was going to tell him how to do his job and irritably ignoring them. As a result, Barry ended up missing his train to Starling City, and then, to add insult to injury, the next one wound up being late.

"This is the only guy we got on camera," an SCPD crime scene tech was saying as Barry entered the Queen Consolidated Applied Sciences building, having finally made it to his destination. "The rest of the crew must have come in after him."

"Actually, it was just one guy," Barry spoke up, approaching the group consisting of Oliver Queen, his bodyguard John Diggle, an SCPD detective, and the pretty blonde Barry remembered seeing on the news after being saved by the Starling City vigilante.

"Sorry I'm late," he went on as they all turned to look at him. "Actually, my train was late. Well, the second one, the first one I did miss, but that was my cab driver's fault. I've got this great traffic app, and..." He trailed off, noticing the stares he was getting and realizing that he was rambling. "Well, he uh, he thought that he was right," he finished lamely. "But I'm here now, so-"

"Great," the SCPD detective interjected. "Who the hell are you?"

"And do your parents know that you're here?" Oliver, standing next to him, put in. Barry bristled at that. He knew that he looked much younger than he was, but he was so sick of hearing comments like that. He resisted the urge to snap that no, his parents didn't know that he was here, because he was an adult and could come and go as he pleased and instead said, "I'm Barry Allen. I'm from the Central City Police Department. I'm with the crime scene investigation unit." He held out his badge for them to see."We're working on a case with some similar unexplained elements in Central City, so when the report of your robbery came over the wire, my captain sent me up here." He hoped they couldn't tell that the last part wasn't true. He'd always been a terrible liar.

"And you think one guy ripped through this door like it was tinfoil," the detective- Quentin Lance, Barry remembered suddenly- said, distracting him from his thoughts. He chose to respond to that like it was a question, though it hadn't been said like one.

"One very strong guy, yeah," he confirmed. Pulling out his tablet, he continued, "It takes about 1,250 foot pounds of torque to break someone's neck." Pulling up an autopsy photo and turning his tablet around for everyone to see, he added, "See the marks on the guard's neck? The bruising pattern suggests the killer used only one hand." Barry noticed that Oliver looked increasingly more worried as he pointed out all the evidence, and he wondered why.

"I'm guessing you don't know how hard it is to break someone's neck," he said.

"Hmm?" Oliver asked in a distracted tone, looking up from the autopsy photo. "No. No idea."

"We're going to need a list of the entire inventory here in order to figure out what was stolen," the tech from earlier said, addressing Oliver.

"Actually, I think I know what was stolen," Barry put in. "A centrifuge. An industrial centrifuge. Probably the Kord Enterprises 2BX 900. Maybe the six series. Both have a three column base. Here"- he pointed to a spot on the floor- "you can see three sets of broken bolts where the thief just ripped it out of the ground."

"And what exactly is a centrifuge?" Lance asked.

"It separates liquids," the blonde from the news answered before Barry could. " The centripetal acceleration causes denser substances to separate out along the radial direction."

"The lighter objects rise to the top," Barry simplified in response to Lance's confused look.

"What did you say your name was again?" the blonde asked.

"Barry," Barry answered. "Allen."

"Felicity," the blonde said. "Smoak." She smiled, and Barry felt something that he might have called a spark if he'd been a hopeless romantic like his sister. Then he noticed the look Oliver was giving him, like he was encroaching on his territory.

_He and Felicity must be dating_, Barry thought. A shame. Kara was always nagging him to put himself out there and actually date instead of spending all his time pining after Iris, and he honestly wouldn't have minded doing so with Felicity. Just from her explanation of what a centrifuge was, he could already tell that they had a lot in common.

"Um," he said awkwardly, turning away from Oliver's dagger sharp glare, "you can see the cracks heading toward the door. Footsteps. One guy. Anyway, it's just a theory. One backed by a lot of evidence."

"There has to be another explanation," Lance insisted.

"Yeah, I'm sure you're right," Barry agreed just to humor him. Lance pulled Felicity aside and they had a hurried conversation in low, inaudible voices. Barry wondered what about, especially when, in the middle of it, Felicity glanced toward Oliver, who was studying the spot where the centrifuge had been with a troubled expression. As Barry watched, he got to his feet and headed for the door, leaving without so much as a backward glance or a single word to anyone.

Felicity stepped suddenly into Barry's field of view, startling him.

"Hey," she said, smiling sheepishly. "So, Oliver"- she jerked her head towards the door he'd just disappeared through- "really wants to keep this whole investigation in house, you know, bad for publicity and all that, so do you think you could come by QC later? Maybe give us a hand?"

"I'd have to clear it with my captain," Barry replied, afraid that if he didn't include that detail Felicity might figure out that he was lying about being here on official CCPD business, "but I think I can do that, sure." Felicity smiled.

"Okay, great," she said, and turned to leave.

"Just what are you to Oliver, anyway?" Barry asked before she could, noting that most people weren't on first name terms with their boss.

"Me?" Felicity asked. "Nothing. I'm just his assistant." There was a bitter, angry twist to her mouth when she said that, but before Barry could inquire about it further, she had left.

When Barry arrived at Queen Consolidated, he found Felicity, Oliver, and Diggle deep in conversation.

"Can we help you with something, Detective?" Oliver asked, spotting him over Felicity's shoulder.

"Oh, CSIs aren't detectives," Barry corrected, approaching the group, which dispersed and turned to face him as he came near. "We don't even carry guns. Just some plastic baggies." He laughed awkwardly. It was a pretty lame joke, but it got Felicity to laugh, which had pretty much been the goal. He wanted to make up for upsetting her earlier.

"Uh, where should I set up my equipment?" he asked.

"I'll show you," Felicity piped up, stepping away from Oliver and Diggle.

"What's going on?" Oliver wanted to know.

"Your assistant said that you preferred to keep the investigation in house," Barry explained, "so I cleared it with my captain to give you a hand." Oliver nodded, then put a hand on Felicity's elbow and guided her off to the side, where they had a conversation that both their distance from him and the low volume of their voices kept Barry from overhearing. He noted that Oliver's hand hadn't moved from Felicity's elbow and the way he leaned downward into her space as they talked. He wondered if CEOs were usually so familiar with their assistants.

"I'll show you around," Felicity said abruptly, turning toward Barry again. She closed the distance between them, leaving Oliver and Diggle behind, and led him out of the room.

Eventually, they ended up back at the crime scene, and Barry moved quickly to get his equipment set up and get right to work.

"What exactly are you looking for?" Felicity asked, peering over the monitors to watch him as he examined the floor.

"Your thief's shoes touched the ground, "Barry replied distractedly, his attention on what he was doing, "which means he tracked in dozens of clues as to where he's been the past few days." Finding what he was looking for, he plucked a particulate from the floor with a pair of tweezers and stuck it under a microscope for analysis.

"So you've seen him, right?" he asked, trying to make conversation. "The vigilante? I read that he saved you. What was he like?"

"Green," Felicity replied bluntly.

"Green," Barry repeated. "That's interesting, right? I mean, why green? Black would be better for both stealth and urban camouflage. Me personally, I think he trained in a jungle or forest environment, and the green is a nod to that."

"I don't give the vigilante much thought," Felicity said. It was clear that she would have rather talked about something, _anything_, else, but Barry was on a roll now.

"Police reports show that he uses carbon arrows," he said, "but if he switched to an aluminum carbon composite, he would have _far _better penetration."

"Maybe he thinks he penetrates just fine," Felicity put in, clearly trying to bring this conversation to a close.

"Do you want to know something?" Barry went on. "I think he has partners. Definitely someone with a background in computer science."

"Yeah," Felicity said. She didn't seem particularly interested. "Why are you so interested in the vigilante?" Barry shrugged.

"Working as a CSI," he said, "I've encountered a lot of unsolvable cases. Murderers the police couldn't stop. Maybe he could have." Felicity nodded, and Barry went back to examining the particulate he'd found.

"The soil," he said after a few minutes. "There's a crystalline structure in it." He examined it for a few more minutes, then added, "That's weird."

"What's weird?" Felicity asked.

"It's sugar," Barry replied. Felicity looked like a lightbulb had just gone off in her head, and she ran over to one of the computers and began typing furiously.

"You found something?" Oliver asked by way of announcing himself as he walked into the room with Diggle in tow, some time later.

"We found something," Felicity confirmed.

"There were trace amounts of sucrose in a speck of dirt the killer dragged in here on his boot," Barry supplied.

"Which got me thinking," Felicity put in, jumping off of what Barry had said. "There's a sugar refinery two miles from here. The land around it is suffused in waste sugar, so I checked. They had a delivery truck stolen a few days ago."

"Their truck matches the make and model of the truck the thief used to steal the centrifuge," Barry added, privately reveling in the way he and Felicity were tag teaming off of one another, working together like a well-oiled machine, as if they'd been doing it for years.

"Can you track the vehicle?" Oliver asked.

"We've been trying," Felicity said. Behind her, something beeped. She went over to the computer that had made the sound, frowning as she studied the screen.

"What was that?" Oliver asked.

"You're not going to believe this," Felicity answered. "The truck was just used to rob a blood bank." Her voice rose in pitch at the end of her sentence, turning it into a question.

"Are you sure?" Oliver asked. Like the rest of them, he seemed utterly confused by _that_ turn of events.

"Yeah, our guy just made off with thirty thousand ccs of O negative," Felicity confirmed.

"Wait, super strong, likes blood?" Diggle, who'd been silent up to that point, put in. "Please don't tell me we suddenly believe in vampires."

"We should give this information to the local police," Barry advised.

"I'll… take care of that," Oliver said. "Did you say you were working a similar case in Central City?"

"Oh, yeah," Barry stammered, not expecting to be called out on that at this precise moment. "Um, yeah. Yeah, you know, it's similar. Has similar elements. A lot of similarities."

"Right," Oliver said. He sounded skeptical.

"Yeah," Barry replied. He watched Oliver have a murmured conversation with Diggle before leaving the building.

"He's not really going to the police, is he?" he asked, noticing that he had seemed cagey about it earlier.

"If I answered that," Felicity replied drily, "I'd have to kill you."

Nighttime found Barry at the train station, running toward the ticket counter as fast as his legs could carry him. He'd enjoyed his time in Starling City, despite the distinctly negative experience of being taken to task by Oliver- in front of Felicity, no less- for lying about having been sent by his captain. Now he'd been found out by Captain Singh as well, and he'd made it clear that Barry needed to be back in Central City by tomorrow if he wanted to still have a job. Which he did, hence why he was at the train station.

"One way to Central City," he said breathlessly, reaching the ticket counter.

"It left ten minutes ago," replied the old man behind it.

"Of course it did," Barry muttered with a sigh. "When is the next one?"

"In the morning," the old man said bluntly. He folded his coat over his arm as he stepped out from behind the counter. He switched off the light on his way out, leaving Barry alone in the semi dark. With a sigh, he sat down on a nearby bench to wait for morning and the next train.

He wasn't sure how much time had passed when he felt a sudden sharp pin prick on the side of his neck and everything went black. He came to in a strange underground room. As his gaze roved around it and he spotted the empty display case that was obviously meant to hold some kind of suit and the racks of freshly sharpened arrows, he realized that he must be in the lair of the Starling City vigilante.

On a table directly in front of him lay a person clad in green leather- the vigilante himself. Barry hoped to God that he was unconscious, not dead, though from this angle it was hard to tell either way. Starting at his feet, Barry let his gaze travel slowly up the vigilante's body, stopping briefly at his chest to make sure he was breathing- he was- before moving on. When he saw his face, he could hardly believe his eyes- the vigilante was none other than Oliver Queen. Barry felt a brief, renewed spark of anger at the way he had treated him earlier- what right did he have to be angry with him for lying when he was keeping a secret this big? But his anger quickly faded when he realized that something was obviously very wrong.

Reeling from shock and still trying to process everything, Barry flinched when someone suddenly stepped in front of him. He glanced up and saw that it was Felicity.

"Please save my friend," she said in a voice trembling with fear and some other emotion that Barry couldn't name, and he knew that he was going to have his work cut out for him.


	3. The Disaster

Barry sighed as he entered his apartment, letting his bag slip off of his shoulder and fall to the floor next to the door before shuffling off to his bedroom, dragging his suitcase behind him. The events of the unexpected extension of his time in Starling City had utterly exhausted him, and he was ready to drop.

_At least I still have a job_, he thought, contemplating the fact that he'd only just barely made it back within Captain Singh's deadline as he fell onto his bed, too tired to unpack his suitcase or change into pajamas. _And I'll still get to see the particle accelerator turn on._ That was his last thought before he fell asleep.

The next day, Barry's normal day to day routine resumed. He woke up, got dressed, stopped by Jitters for his morning coffee and a quick chat with Iris, then went to work, where he endured the usual lectures from Captain Singh about his perpetual tardiness. If those lectures seemed a little harsher than usual due to recent events, Barry decided it was in his best interests not to mention it. He was skating on thin ice as it was, and he _did_ want to keep his job.

"What was it this time, Mr. Allen?" Captain Singh asked irritably on the morning of the day the particle accelerator was set to turn on, when he was late to a crime scene yet again. "Did you forget to set your alarm clock? And before you answer, I should remind you that the excuse you gave last time was car trouble. Do you want to know why that one was particularly memorable?"

"I do not own a car," Barry muttered, chastened.

"He was running an errand for me," Joe put in, thankfully stepping in to save his ass. "Barry, did you get me what I asked for?"

"Yeah," Barry said, catching on to the lie. "Yeah, I did." He searched his pockets desperately for something, _anything_, he could give to Joe. He came up with nothing except a half-eaten candy bar.

"Here," he said, handing it to Joe. "I had a few bites of it, so…" He trailed off, well aware of what a terrible job he was doing of making this convincing. Attempting to dispel the awkwardness hanging over the whole scene, Barry set about examining the crime scene for clues.

"Getaway car is a Mustang Shelby GT500," he said after a few minutes. "Shelbys have a rear superwide tire specific to that model. Twelve inches with an asymmetrical tread. And there's something else." He grabbed a pen from Joe's partner, Chyre, with a muttered, "Thanks" and used it to scoop something that resembled dirt or possibly mud from the tire track.

"Fecal excrement," he said once he'd gotten a good look at it. "Animal, I'd guess." He dropped the pen into an evidence bag and sealed it.

"My dad gave me that pen," Chrye said in a choked voice. "Before he died."

"Sorry," Barry mumbled awkwardly, accompanying the apology with a sheepish shrug. He quickly gathered up the evidence he'd collected and his kit and all but fled from the crime scene. After all the blunders he'd made and the awkwardness he'd caused, he couldn't get away from there fast enough.

"So, how was your trip?" Iris asked him outside of STAR Labs that night, while they searched the crowd for Kara, who was writing an article on the particle accelerator for the Sentinel and they were supposed to be meeting here. "Did you find evidence of the impossible in Starling City, or did you just make my dad mad for no reason?" Barry didn't think it was her dad that he had made mad, but he didn't say so.

"Actually, while I was away, I had time to think about… you know, relationships," he said instead. When Iris looked at him with a question written on her face, he added, "Oh, I'm not in one. And you're not in one either. And you're my best friend, Iris."

"You're mine too," Iris replied. "Why else would I be here?"

"That's not what I meant," Barry said. After seeing Felicity with Oliver and recognizing himself in the way the former looked at and spoke to the latter, he'd realized that if he wanted to have any chance of being with the person he wanted to be with, he'd have to tell Iris how he really felt about her. But of course, his own inarticulateness tripped him up once again, and in the time it took him to stumble through his jumbled thoughts and feelings, Iris had already moved on to something else. Of course, by that time Barry had pretty much given up as well.

"Look, there's Kara," Iris said, pointing. Kara, spotting them, waved a hand above her head in greeting, jumping up and down to ensure that she would be seen over the crowd.

"Hey, you two," she said when they reached her, hugging each of them in turn.

"Hey yourself," Iris replied. "How goes the article?"

"Better once Harrison Wells gives whatever speech he's got planned," Kara said, pointing to where the man in question was stepping up to a podium to cheers and applause from the crowd.

"Thank you," he said. "My name is Harrison Wells, and tonight the future begins. The work my team will do here will change our understanding of physics. It will bring about advancements in power, advancements in medicine, and trust me, that future will be here faster than you think." Barry listened to Wells speak, enraptured, until Iris' cry of "Ow!" jolted him out of his reverie.

"Hey, my laptop!" Iris called desperately, staring helplessly after the dark clad hooded figure slipping away through the crowd. "It's got my dissertation!" Barry and Kara exchanged a look, having a brief and silent debate about which one of them should go after the thief, and then Barry set off after him.

By the time he'd managed to chase the thief directly into the path of a passing police officer- one Detective Eddie Thawne- make sure Iris' laptop got back to her, and get himself back to STAR Labs, Barry had missed the cut off in line and was denied entry. He felt his heart sink. He wouldn't get to see the particle accelerator turn on, the one thing he'd been looking forward to for _weeks_. Feeling despondent, he headed to his lab, not knowing what else to do. On his way there, almost on a whim, he called Felicity.

"Hi," she said when the line stopped ringing.

"Hey," Barry answered.

"Did you make it?" Felicity asked.

"I made it back to Central City in time," Barry replied, "but I missed the cut off in line at STAR Labs. I was late"- He swiped his key card and pulled the door to his lab open- "as usual."

"But, in the spirit of not being late again," he went on as he walked into his lab, "if you ever decide that Oliver Queen isn't the guy for you, if you decide that you want to go on a date with… someone else, you should know that that guy? He'll be on time."

"Good to know," Felicity said. Barry had only made the stipulation about her deciding that Oliver wasn't the guy for her because he knew that it would never happen, and he could tell by the tone of her voice that she knew that and was humoring him.

"Oh, and I left something for Oliver," he added. "I hope he likes it."

"Bye, Barry," Felicity said.

"Bye, Felicity," Barry replied, and hung up. He had the local news on, and he listened to it with half an ear, the majority of his attention on adding a newspaper article about the Applied Sciences robbery to an investigation board he was building centered around unexplained events.

"Wait, we are now being told to evacuate the facility." The news broadcast cut suddenly into the forefront of Barry's focus. "The storm may have caused malfunction to the primary cooling system. Officials are now trying to shut down the particle accelerator, but so far have been unable to regain control of the system." Barry's eyes widened. Through the window, he saw a brilliant flash of light go off above STAR Labs, then heard a rumble like thunder, accompanying a shockwave that knocked out power on its way across the city. He ran toward the skylight which he, foolishly, hadn't closed when he'd first noticed that it was open upon entering his lab. Yanking on the chain that opened and closed the skylight, Barry raced to shut it against the storm raging outside. Before he could, a bolt of lightning came arcing through it and struck him, knocking him off his feet, and then everything went black.


	4. The Aftermath

It was eerily silent in the bullpen of the Central City Sentinel without the usual constant background noise of TV news programs playing and computer fans humming and the clatter of keyboard keys. The particle accelerator explosion had knocked out power across the city, and work at the Sentinel had ground to halt. Now they were all just waiting for the power to come back on and to hear if an evacuation would be necessary or not. With her super sensitive hearing, Kara could hear the pounding heartbeats of the other people in the bullpen, but to them she imagined it was utterly and totally silent.

Kara's phone rang, shattering the quiet. She flinched, startled. She hadn't realized that any of the local cell towers were still working.

"Hello?" she asked, lifting her phone to her ear with hands gone suddenly shaky and unsteady, fearing the worst.

"Kara," Iris said breathlessly on the other end. "Something's happened. You need to get to the hospital. It's-it's Barry." Her voice broke on the last sentence. Kara felt the world drop out from under her. She hung up her phone and ran to her editor's office.

"I need to go," she said in a rush, leaning into the doorway, clinging to its edge with a white-knuckled grip. "It's my brother. He's in the hospital. I need to go see him." Her editor looked a little startled by her sudden appearance, but recovered quickly.

"Of course," she said. "Go." Kara blinked, caught off guard. For some reason, she'd been expecting more resistance, but she realized that her editor had prepared herself for requests like Kara's in the wake of what had just happened at STAR Labs. Plus, Kara would never ask to duck out of work early under normal circumstances, so she had that going for her. Realizing that she was wasting time, she swung herself out of the doorway of her editor's office and raced for the front entrance of the building.

A short time later, Kara went racing into the hospital, her footsteps clattering against its linoleum floor. She'd run here as she could from the Sentinel. She'd wanted to fly- it would have gotten her here faster- but the risk of being seen was too great. Even just on foot, she'd managed to cover the distance fairly quickly- her Kryptonian physiology was such that her top running speed was faster than anything an ordinary human could manage, _especially_ her brother. She'd never met a person who ran more slowly than her brother. The thought of him made her falter, given the circumstances, and she hastily shoved it aside.

After being directed to Barry's hospital room, Kara arrived there to find her way inside blocked by bodies- Joe, Iris, Henry, and Nora were all crowded inside. In other words, everyone Barry considered family, except for her. A cry of distress escaped her at the thought that she hadn't been there for her brother when he'd needed her, just like she hadn't been there for her cousin when _he'd_ needed her. So far, her track record was _terrible_.

Iris, who had been standing closest to the door, turned at the sound Kara had made and immediately pulled her into a hug.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," Kara mumbled into her shoulder in a desperate, trembling voice. "I should have been there-"

"It's not your fault," Iris interjected gently. "There was nothing you could have done." Iris didn't know the truth about her, didn't know that there _were_ things she could have done if only she had _been there_, so Kara refused to allow herself to take comfort in her words.

The moment Iris released her and she finally gained entrance into the room, Kara ran straight to Barry's bedside, slipping between her parents, who were standing there looking down on their son with expressions of worry so intense that it bordered on terror. She looked back and forth between them and her brother for a moment before dragging the unoccupied chair sitting in the corner over to the side of the bed and dropping into it like a stone. She took Barry's hand in hers and gave it a squeeze, hoping that, somewhere in the depths of his coma, he would feel it and know that even if she had been late, she was here with and for him now.

The next thing Kara knew, someone was shaking her awake. She didn't know when she'd fallen asleep, or how long she'd been out, but a quick glance around the room told her that it had been long enough for it to have emptied of everyone but her, her brother, and her parents. Then she realized that her mother was standing over her, one hand on her shoulder, studying her face with gentle concern.

"We need to go, honey," she said, voice soft, regret tinging her words. "Visiting hours are ending soon."

"No," Kara said, leaning away from Nora as much as she could manage without moving away from Barry or letting go of his hand. "I need to be here for Barry. He needs to know that I'm here. Please don't make me leave him."

"If we don't leave, they're going to kick us out," Nora explained, the regret that tinged her voice turning into sympathy and something that sounded like sorrow. She didn't want to leave Barry any more than Kara did, but somehow that didn't change her stance.

"_Please_," Kara whispered. She glanced frantically back and forth between Henry and Nora, silently begging just one of them to budge, to change their minds and let her stay with Barry. Neither of them did, and the next thing she knew they each had a hand on one of her arms and were gently and carefully guiding her up out of her chair. Kara knew that she could resist, that if she planted herself and simply refused to move, there'd be nothing Henry or Nora could do to make her, and nothing anyone on the hospital staff could do either, but she found that all the fight had gone out of her.

"Let's go, sweetie," Nora said, draping an arm across her shoulders and walking her out of the room. "We can come back tomorrow. I promise."


	5. A Desperate Deal

The next day, Kara returned to the hospital, accompanied by Henry and Nora. Reaching Barry's room, she planted herself in the same chair she'd been sitting in the day before, determined to stay there for as long as humanly- or inhumanly, in her case- possible. Since she'd taken the only chair, it took Henry and Nora a few minutes to find somewhere to situate themselves, but eventually they settled in, Henry seated on the windowsill, his feet flat against the floor, Nora perched on the edge of Barry's bed, across from where Kara sat. No one spoke- Barry's room had the heavy, sacred silence of a temple or a tomb, and none of them dared break it.

Kara, for her part, fell into her work, which she'd brought along with her. She was lucky to have an editor who wasn't much of a stickler about whether or not her reporters came into the office. As far as she was concerned, so long as they met their deadlines, they could work from wherever they wanted. Kara had never been more grateful for that policy than she was right now. Her work gave her something to do, something to focus on besides how worried she was about her brother, and she welcomed the distraction. She soon settled in, and hour after hour passed her by, broken only by brief breaks for meals, until the end of visiting hours came again. Though she didn't want to, this time Kara left without protest, understanding the importance of doing so for both courtesy and appearances' sake.

The pattern repeated itself the next day, and the day after that- Kara came to the hospital at the start of visiting hours and sat with her brother until they were over, sometimes with her parents, sometimes without. Things on as what had become normal in the days since the particle accelerator explosion, with no change in Barry's condition. Then, on the fourth day, things took a sudden and dramatic turn for the worse. Kara was on one of her brief trips outside the hospital, getting lunch, when her phone rang.

"You need to get back here as fast as you possibly can," Nora said on the other end when she answered it. Her voice trembled. "It's Barry. Something's- something's happening."

"I'll be right there," Kara said. She hung up the phone and bolted for the door of the restaurant, all thoughts of lunch forgotten. She ducked into a nearby alleyway and glanced around to make sure there was no one nearby before launching herself into the sky. This time, she didn't care about the risk of being seen- her mother had made it clear that she needed to be at the hospital _right now_. Her brother needed her, and she wasn't going to fail him again.

Kara arrived at Barry's hospital room to find Nora and Henry standing out in the hallway, Nora with a hand over her mouth to stifle a sob, her eyes glimmering with tears, Henry with his arms around her, holding her tightly, clearly trying to offer her comfort in whatever little ways he could. From inside the room came the repeated high pitched whine of a defibrillator charging and the sound of doctors calling out to one another in loud, urgent voices.

"What's going on?" Kara asked. She sounded panicky, even to her own ears, but it couldn't be helped.

"Barry, he-he was fine one moment," Nora replied, her voice wavering, "and the next...he-he-he- went into cardiac arrest. The doctors were able to restart his heart, but then he started to flatline again a minute later, and it keeps happening over and over again. The doctors… they don't know what's wrong. There's nothing in his scans. Other than the fact that he's in a coma, he _should_ be functioning perfectly fine. They can't figure out what's causing this." An agonized expression flashed across Henry's face, and Kara realized that it must be killing him that, as a doctor himself, he didn't know what was happening to Barry any more than the ones working so desperately to keep him alive did, that, for all his medical knowledge, and skill with healing, he couldn't help his son any more than they could.

"They can't save him," a voice behind them said suddenly, a voice that Kara was surprised to recognize as that of Harrison Wells. They turned, and sure enough, there he was, sitting in the motorized wheelchair he'd been put in a result of the accelerator explosion, watching the scene before him with an inscrutable expression.

"They can't save him," he repeated when he saw that he had their attention. "But I can." The Allen family closed ranks, moving to stand shoulder to shoulder, blocking access to Barry's room.

"Why the hell should we believe anything you say?" Henry demanded. "Your accelerator just nearly destroyed the city! How can we possibly trust you?"

"Those doctors in there, they have no idea what's going on," Wells said instead of answering the question, pointing over Henry's shoulder at the room behind him. "But _I_ do. Let me take Barry to STAR Labs. It's the only place with the resources and personnel necessary to save him. If you want your son to make it through this, I'm your only option." He spoke in the smooth, unhurried manner of someone who believed, with absolute conviction, what they were saying. Silence followed his words while he waited for Henry and Nora to make their decision. Kara watched him for a moment, as if somehow her xray vision would allow her to see what his true motives were, before turning her head to study her parents as they mulled over his words. She wasn't sure that they could trust Wells, but as he'd said, they didn't have any other options. Nevertheless, she waited to see what her parents would decide.

"All right," Henry finally said, speaking for both himself and Nora. "Do what you have to do. Save our son, no matter what it takes."


	6. A Strange New Normal

Barry's move to STAR Labs was accompanied by an entourage of visitors, much to the apparent consternation of Harrison Wells. He clearly wanted to work in private, but he couldn't very well hide Barry away from his family and friends, and so he was forced to accommodate the constant parade of people coming in and out of the Cortex to see him. As a result, those people rarely if ever actually saw whatever work Wells and his team were doing to fix Barry's condition, and so had to take it on faith that it was happening.

Barry's constantly rotating parade of visitors included Kara, Henry and Nora, Joe, and Iris, as well as the occasional colleague from the CCPD. As the weeks passed, Henry was eventually forced to return to work, which he did only with the knowledge that there were plenty of other people watching over Barry, who would let him know if there was any change in his condition, either positive or negative.

This pattern continued for the next several weeks. Eventually, Kara started coming in to the office every day once again, something that she, like Henry, was only able to do because she knew there were others- namely Joe, Iris, and Nora- watching over Barry. All the same, every spare moment she had, she spent with him at STAR Labs.

Upon one such instance, she walked into the Cortex to find a woman she didn't know sitting alone at Barry's bedside, Iris and the others being elsewhere, at least for the moment. She wore clothing of the type that toed the line between formal and casual and glasses with two-toned rectangular frames, her shoulder length blonde hair pulled back in a neat, no-nonsense ponytail. She must have just come from work, as she had an ID badge around her neck that, in the brief glimpse Kara caught of it, identified her as an employee of Queen Consolidated.

"You must be the girl Barry met in Starling City," she surmised aloud. "The one who works with the vigilante."

"Hmm?" the woman asked, turning her head toward Kara, her earrings swinging in time with the motion. "Oh. Yeah. I'm Felicity. Felicity Smoak. And you are?"

"I'm Kara," Kara answered. In response to Felicity's questioning look, she clarified, "Barry's sister." Felicity nodded.

"Barry never mentioned that he had a sister," she muttered.

"It must have slipped his mind," Kara replied, sitting down in one of the unoccupied chairs at Barry's bedside. "You know, what with everything else that was going on while he was in Starling." Felicity nodded again, and they both sat in silence for a few minutes before she asked "Barry didn't… tell you who the vigilante is, did he?" Kara shook her head.

"No," she said. "He didn't. I asked, but he told me that it's not his secret to tell." Felicity looked relieved.

"Good," she said quietly. "That's good." They sat in silence again, until the sound of a ringing phone disturbed the quiet.

"What's going on Oliver?" Felicity asked, answering it. "What do you need?" Kara wasn't trying to listen in, but with her super sensitive hearing, she couldn't help but overhear the person on the other end- Oliver, apparently- reply "Why do you assume I need something? I can't just call you because I want to talk to you?"

"You _could_," Felicity said. "But you don't."

"Well, this time I am," Oliver replied. "I wanted to see how you're doing. Are you holding up alright?" At that point, Kara deliberately blocked out Oliver's half of the conversation, his words making her realize that this was a personal matter that shouldn't be listened in on by a stranger.

"I'm fine," Felicity said, an emotion in her voice that Kara couldn't name, not that she was really trying to in the first place. "Are you sure you guys don't need anything?" Whatever Oliver's response was, it must have brought their conversation to a close, as Felicity hung up her phone a moment later. Then the two women sat in silence once more, until they parted ways at the end of the day.

Kara saw Felicity only sporadically over the next few days, as she tended to trade off with Nora and the Wests and thus was only present when they were not, and when she _did_ see her, she noticed that she seemed distracted, pulled in two different directions at once, her focus split, alternating between sitting quietly at Barry's bedside and having hurried, terse phone conversations with her boss, her half of which seemed to have to do with something _other_ than the normal day to day of her job. Eventually, Felicity's work called her back to Starling City, and Kara thought no more about what exactly those phone conversations might be about.

As months passed, Kara began to accept this pattern of going to work and then visiting her brother before going home to sleep and then waking up to do it all over again the next day as her new normal. She became well acquainted with the members of Wells' team- though not Wells himself, as he was an extremely private, closed off type of individual- and saw more of Nora and the Wests than she had in quite some time. Things continued on that way, mundane and routine, until Kara stumbled into something that threatened to shake up what they all now thought of as "normal".

She was walking toward the Cortex when she overheard Iris talking to Barry. That in and of itself was nothing unusual- she'd heard that coma patients were aware of everything that was going on around them, and so she often talked to Barry when she sat with him. It was _what _she was saying that caught Kara off guard.

"Detective Pretty Boy asked me out on a date today, and I actually said yes," she heard Iris say as she neared the entrance of the Cortex. "See, that's the kind of bad decision I make when you're not around." Her voice quavered, like she was about to start crying, and Kara stopped in her tracks. After debating with herself for a few minutes, she turned and left, deciding to give Iris her private moment with Barry, as she clearly hadn't meant for anyone else but him to hear what she'd just said. Even so, Kara found herself thinking about it the whole way home. Iris may have just meant that she'd made a poor decision without Barry there acting as a voice of reason- which, among the three of them, he often was, at least when it came to relationships- but Kara couldn't help but wonder if maybe, just maybe, Iris' words meant that Barry's crush on her may not have been as one sided as he and his sister both thought.


	7. Awakening

_Can I ask you a question?" Barry asked, eyeing his sister from across the kitchen table, where they were both working on their homework._

_"I mean, you kind of just did," Kara replied, and there was no clumsiness in her speech, no trace of the fact that she'd grown up speaking a - quite literally- alien language the way there had been when she'd first become part of their family. "But sure. Go ahead._

_"What were you called back on your planet?" Barry asked. In response to Kara's confused look, he clarified, "Before you became Kara Allen, what was your name?"_

_"Oh," Kara said in a small, quiet voice, with a sadness to it that was far deeper than her years. "It was Kara Zor-El."_

_"That's a pretty cool name," Barry said, offering her a smile, trying to cheer his sister up._

_"Thanks," Kara replied in a whisper, and they went back to their homework. _

Distant music drew Barry out of the memory and toward consciousness. As he neared it, the music grew louder and resolved itself into a particular song- Lady Gaga's "Poker Face" which seemed rather odd and out of place.

"What are you doing?" a woman's voice, not one he recognized, asked.

"He likes this song," a second voice, this one male, insisted.

"How could you possibly know that?" the woman demanded.

"I checked his Facebook page," the man replied. "I mean, he can hear everything, right?"

"Auditory functions _are_ the last sensory faculties to deteriorate," the woman conceded. The man started singing along to the music, cutting himself off with a yelping cry of "Oh my God!" when Barry jerked upright, his full return to consciousness coming on sudden and fast.

"Where am I?" Barry asked.

"He's up," the woman said, ignoring him. That seemed like stating the obvious, but Barry was too confused and disoriented to comment on it. A short distance away, the man was shouting into a speaker- "Doctor Wells, get down to the Cortex like right now."

_Doctor Wells?_ Barry wondered, the words somehow not computing in his brain. As he tried to puzzle them out, he realized that the woman was in the middle of examining him and her words finally filtered into his awareness "...110. Pulse 120. Pupils equally reactive to light." Her tone was brisk and clinical, like an ER doctor's. Maybe that's what she was. Barry couldn't be sure. He tried to get up from the bed he'd awoken in, but she pushed him back.

"Look at me," she said, her tone shifting to something almost calming. "Look at me."

"Hey, hey, hey," the man said urgently when Barry tried to get up again, rushing over to his bedside to help the woman, not push him back again, but ease him slowly and carefully upright. "Woah, relax. Everything's okay, man. You're at STAR Labs."

"STAR Labs…" Barry said, trailing off as he struggled to fit that information into the rush of it that was suddenly flooding his brain. "Who are you?"

"I'm Cisco Ramon," the man replied. "She's Caitlin- Doctor Snow."

"I need you to urinate in this," Doctor Snow proclaimed briskly, holding up a sample cup.

"Not this second," Cisco scolded, taking the cup from her.

"What happened?" Barry asked, still feeling incredibly confused. Nothing about this was making sense. He scrambled out of the bed and backed nervously away from Cisco and Doctor Snow.

"You were struck by lightning, dude," Cisco explained. He sounded oddly excited about it.

"Lighting… gave me abs?" Barry asked, puzzled, spotting himself in a nearby reflective surface.

"Your muscles should be atrophied, but instead they're in a chronic and unexplained state of cellular regeneration," Caitlin- Barry decided to call her Caitlin instead of Doctor Snow- said, still in that brisk, clinical tone.

"Come here, have a seat," Cisco put in, guiding Barry over to one of the rolling office chairs arranged around the room, which reminded him, now that he'd gotten a look at it, of Oliver's crime fighting lair in Starling City. He sat, not seeing any point in resisting.

"You were in a coma," Cisco explained once Barry was seated.

"For how long?" he asked.

"Nine months." The voice, which Barry was surprised to recognize as Harrison Wells', came from the doorway. All three of the people in it turned to see him there, in a wheelchair, smiling a strange, sad smile.

"Welcome back, Mr. Allen," he said. "We have a lot to discuss."

"It's hard to believe I'm here," Barry said in an excited rush as he walked beside Wells through one of STAR Labs' long, curving corridors a few minutes later. "I have _always_ wanted to meet you face to face."

"Yeah?" Wells asked dryly. "Well, you certainly went to great lengths to do it. STAR Labs has not been operational since FEMA declared us as a class four hazardous location. Seventeen people died last night. Many more were injured, myself among them."

"What happened?" Barry asked. It was the second time he'd asked that question in the last fifteen minutes, and he suspected not the last time he'd ask it that day.

"Nine months ago, the particle accelerator went on exactly as planned," Wells answered. "For forty-five minutes, I had achieved my life's dream. And then… there was an anomaly. The electron volts became immeasurable, and the ring under us popped. Energy from that detonation was thrown into the sky, and that, in turn, seeded a storm cloud-"

"That created a lightning bolt, that struck me," Barry interjected.

"That's right," Wells confirmed. "I was recovering myself when I heard about you- the hospital was undergoing unexplainable power outages every time you were going into cardiac arrest, which was actually a misdiagnosis because, you see, you weren't flatlining, Barry. Your heartbeat was simply moving too fast for the EKG to register it."

"Now," Wells went on, "I'm not the most popular person in town right now, but your parents gave me permission to bring you here, where we were able to stabilize you. They were here frequently visiting you, along with your sister and Detective West and his daughter."

"Iris?" Barry asked.

"Iris, yes," Wells replied, with a tone of voice that implied he'd forgotten her name until Barry had brought it up. "She came to see you quite often." By this time, they had returned to the Cortex.

"She talks a lot," Caitlin put in as they entered, overhearing.

"Also, she's hot," Cisco added, apparently absentmindedly.

"I need to go," Barry said urgently. He was overcome with a sudden desire to go see Iris.

"No, you can't," Caitlin protested.

"No, no, no," Wells added. "Caitlin is right. Now that you're awake, we need to do more tests. You're still going through changes even we don't know."

"I'm fine, really," Barry insisted, backing toward doorway. "I feel normal. Thank you for saving my life." At that, he left. Behind him, he heard Caitlin ask "Really?" In the same instant, he realized he was about to walk out the door wearing a STAR Labs sweatshirt that didn't belong to him.

"Can I keep the sweatshirt?" he asked awkwardly, stepping through the doorway to the Cortex one last time.

"Yeah, keep the sweatshirt," Wells replied, only slightly grumpily.

"Okay," Barry said, still feeling awkward, and then he left the Cortex behind once more, heading for the exit and off to find Iris.


	8. Forgotten Family

The sound of Kara's phone ringing jolted her out of the trance-like state she'd slipped into while working on her latest article, something that often happened to her when she was intensely focused on something.

"Barry's awake," Iris said without preamble on the other end of the line when Kara answered her phone. "He came to see me at Jitters."

"What?" Kara asked. She wasn't sure, in the moment, if she was shocked that Barry was awake or offended that upon his return to consciousness, he'd thought to go and see Iris before his own sister. Had he even told their parents that he was awake yet?

"Yeah," Iris said, distracting Kara from her confused and jumbled thoughts and feelings. "You know, he seemed really… normal. Healthy. Not at all like someone who's been effectively out of commission for the last nine months."

"Where is he now?" Kara asked, deciding that she needed to give her brother a talking to.

"We're at the CCPD," Iris replied. "I thought that he'd want to see everyone now that he's awake." Kara realized that by "everyone" Iris probably meant "my dad", but she didn't comment on it.

"Okay," she said instead. "Don't go anywhere. I'll be there in a few."

"Alright," Iris replied, and that was the end of their conversation.

A few minutes later, when she arrived at the CCPD, Kara immediately spotted her brother staring at a criminal someone had been in the process of booking being wrestled into submission with a freaked out expression on his face. At the sight of him, her jumbled emotion resolved themselves into hurt and anger, and that overrode her curiosity about what had happened with that criminal right before she'd arrived and her worry about why Barry looked so freaked out. Marching forward, Kara grabbed Barry by the upper arm, ignoring his yelp of surprise and protest, and hauled him out of the room and up the stairs to his lab. When she reached it, she snatched Barry's key card from him to open the door, yanking it open and then closed again in two quick motions before letting go of his arm and rounding on him as he stumbled forward.

"What the hell Barry?" Kara demanded. "Why did I have to hear from _Iris_ that you were out of the coma?"

"Well, I've never been manhandled by my sister before," Barry muttered to himself of answering Kara's questions. She glared at him in silent reproach.

"Look, I meant to tell you, alright?" he snapped defensively. "But there was a lot going on, all at once, and I got overwhelmed, and it slipped my mind. Okay?"

"But it didn't slip your mind to go see Iris," Kara said sullenly, letting him know that it was definitely _not _okay.

"Doctor Wells mentioned that she came to see me a lot-" Barry started to explain.

"So did I," Kara interjected crossly. "So did Joe. So did Felicity. So did our parents. And yet you thought of Iris before you thought of any of the rest of us.

"So, what, I'm not allowed to consider her important to me?" Barry asked, his tone shifting from defensive to angry.

"Of _course_ you are," Kara replied, getting frustrated now, "but not more important than your _family_. Do you have any idea how much it hurt to have to hear that my brother had woken up from a coma- a coma that we couldn't be sure he'd recover from, by the way- secondhand? From someone who isn't a family member?" Barry didn't answer.

"Have you even told our parents that you're awake?" Kara asked. "That you're okay? Do they have any idea?" She waited for Barry's answer, growing more and more irritated with him the longer the silence stretched out. There were only a few times in her life that Kara could recall being angry enough with someone that she entertained the idea of blasting them with her heat vision, but this was one of those times.

"It's a yes or no question, Barry," she said when the silence became unbearable.

"No," Barry finally admitted, his voice soft, his expression sheepish. "I didn't think of it." Kara threw her hands up in exasperation.

"Of course you didn't," she snarled. "All you thought of was Iris."

"Hey, that's not fair-" Barry started to protest.

"But is it incorrect?" Kara cut in.

"No," Barry mumbled, fixing his gaze on the floor beneath his feet. There was another long silence. It drew out the tension between the Allen siblings along with it, pulling it taut until it seemed as though, like a thread stretched too tight, both the silence and the tension would snap at any instant.

"I'm sorry," Barry said, finally breaking it. "I… I know that I should have told you or our parents that I was awake first, _before_ going to see Iris, but everything was all confused and jumbled, and nothing was making any sense, and for some reason the only thing that stuck in my brain was that Iris had been to see my while I was in the coma, and that now that I was out of it I should return the favor by going to see her. I really am sorry." He glanced nervously at Kara, sideways, as if afraid to look directly at her. Kara, for her part, studied Barry's face and his body language and came to understand that he'd meant what he said, that he really _was_ sorry. Now she felt like a jerk for being so angry with him.

"I forgive you," she said. "And for what it's worth, I'm sorry too. It wasn't fair of me to expect you to think rationally when you'd literally _just_ woken up from a coma." She laughed weakly, but there was no humor in it.

"You should call our parents," she added after a moment. "Let them know what's going on." Barry nodded, and Kara left his lab so as to allow him to make the call in private. She felt troubled as she left the CCPD behind- for all that she had made her peace with it and forgiven Barry for it, there was still some small part of her that felt hurt that he'd thought to tell Iris that he was okay before he'd thought to tell his own sister.


	9. Happenings

Barry raced into the alley behind the CCPD and jolted to a halt, taking a few deep, steadying breaths in an attempt to slow his racing heartbeat. Something very strange had just happened in there, before Kara had showed up to scold him, and he needed to figure out what. He wasn't sure what prompted him to do it, but he lifted his arm up to his eye level and watched as it suddenly began to vibrate at incredible speed, far too fast for his eyes to follow.

"What's happening to me?" he muttered to himself. The next thing he knew, he was racing down the alleyway, the world around him turning into a blur, just barely managing to stop himself before he ran into a wall. No sooner had he done so than he was off again, this time slamming at full speed into a car that was parked in the alley. Its windshield buckled beneath him from the force of the impact, and he groaned in pain as he slowly pushed himself upright. Then, after double checking to make sure he was alone and there was no one around to see, Barry ran straight down the alley, on purpose, trying to see if maybe he could manage to control this strange new ability this time around. However, as unused to it as he still was, he ended up shooting down the alley like an unguided missile, straight into the open back of a van parked outside a building some distance away from its opening. Luckily, the van was one that belonged to a cleaning service, and there were plenty of clothes needing laundering piled inside to lessen the force of his impact. That force was still great enough to send several articles of clothing flying out of the back of the van when Barry landed in it, and its driver peered inside with a confused, scared expression, startled by his sudden appearance.

"Awesome," Barry said to himself, pleased that he'd at least somewhat managed to direct himself this time, and then he was off like a shot once again, heading for STAR Labs and the only people who would be able to provide him with answers about what was happening to him and, more importantly, _why_ it was happening.

Because he was still only just beginning to figure out the ins and outs of his new powers, Barry ended up overshooting STAR Labs by at least two blocks, and it was at least five minutes before he even realized that he'd done so. Shaking his head, he backtracked, moving a little more slowly this time so he wouldn't miss it again.

"What's happening to me?" he demanded, repeating the question he'd asked himself outside of the CCPD, when he walked into the Cortex, his sudden appearance startling everyone present. He'd expected to encounter some sort of resistance on his way into the building, but as it turned out, STAR Labs had absolutely no security measures in place, probably as a result of the accelerator explosion. "What did that lightning bolt do?" Doctor Wells was the first to speak.

"What do you mean?" he asked. In answer, Barry held up his hand and watched shocked expressions cross the faces of everyone in the room as it once again vibrated at incredible speed, becoming nothing more than a blur attached to the end of his arm.

"I told you we needed to run more tests," Caitlin muttered.

"You both did," Barry said contritely, referring to her and Doctor Wells. "And I should have listened. I'm sorry."

"It doesn't matter," Wells said dismissively, waving off both Barry's apology and Caitiln's protest in response to his dismissal of it. "You're here now, so we can run them. Although, truth be told, most of them were intended to determine exactly what the lighting bolt did to you, which, clearly, we know now."

"Not all of it," Barry pointed out.

"Exactly," Wells agreed. "Which means we need to run tests to determine the precise extent of your powers. Unfortunately"- He glanced around the room as if taking mental stock of the facilities currently available to them- "we don't have anywhere we can do that here."

"What _would_ we need to do that?" Barry asked.

"Well, ideally, some sort of wide, flat open space," Wells replied. "Like an airport runway, for example."

"Well, I can't see the airport officials agreeing to let us shut down one of their runways so we can test out my powers," Barry muttered wryly. "They'd never believe us about their existence in the first place."

"What about the Ferris Air testing facility?" Cisco piped up. "I mean, _they're _not using it. They've been shuttered ever since one of their test pilots went missing."

"That will suit our purposes perfectly," Wells replied. "Excellent work, Cisco."

"All I did was make a suggestion," Cisco said, but it was clear that he was pleased by the praise.

"But it was an excellent suggestion," Wells said, countering Cisco's modesty. "And, as such, worthy of praise." A pause, then he said, "Alright then, let's get going. There's no reason to waste time." Barry watched as he and the others filed out of the room, off to make the necessary preparations before their departure. But something made him hesitate before following after them, and he hung back, remaining in the Cortex. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and stared at it for a moment, remembering how upset- and rightly so, he knew- Kara had been about having to find out about his recovery secondhand. His mind made up, he sent Kara a text that read, _Meet me at the Ferris Air testing facility. There's something you need to see._ Then he shoved his phone back into his pocket and ran off to catch up with the others, eager to find out just how great the extent of his powers was and what the limits or lack thereof might be on what he could do with them.


	10. Revealed

Kara touched down on the asphalt of the Ferris Air testing facility feeling apprehensive. Even though she knew there was probably not anyone else besides herself and her brother around, she still glanced around to make sure no one had seen her arrival. She'd risked flying only because Barry's text message, cryptic though it had been, had seemed urgent, and flight was the quickest method of transportation available to her.

Moments after she landed, Kara spotted a white van parked nearby, a workstation of some sort set up just beyond it, and mentally kicked herself for not paying more attention to her surroundings. She'd risked exposure by not noticing that there were people around in time. Luckily, they had their backs turned toward her, their attention on a figure dressed in bright red spandex and a strange looking helmet that Kara realized after a moment was Barry. When he spotted her, he waved her over with an urgent gesture.

"What's going on?" she asked when she reached him, realizing that the rest of the group consisted of Cisco and Caitlin, who she'd met while Barry had been in his coma, and Harrison Wells, who she hadn't yet met or even spoken to aside from a few brief, isolated encounters.

"I wanted to make up for not coming to you first when I woke up from the coma," Barry explained. "So I thought you should be the first outside of the team at STAR Labs to witness this."

"Seriously, what's going on?" Kara asked, frustrated that Barry's answer hadn't really been much of an answer. "What are we doing here?"

"Just watch," Wells put in, in that smooth, unhurried manner of his. "You'll see." Kara wondered briefly if Barry had given him or the others any sort of explanation as to why he wanted his sister, who as far as anyone besides him and their parents knew was totally normal, here for this, but then she decided that it didn't matter if he had or not. They were all here now, and that was all that really mattered. If she wanted answers, she needed to listen to what Wells had told her to do. To that end, she turned her attention to where Cisco was talking with Barry.

"See, you thought the world was slowing down," he was saying. "It wasn't. You were moving so fast it only looked like everyone else was standing still." Kara raised an eyebrow at that, trying to process exactly what was meant by it, but shook it off and kept listening.

"Doctor Wells will be monitoring your energy output and Caitlin your vitals," Cisco went on, gesturing to each of them in turn.

"And what do you do?" Barry asked.

"I make the toys, man," Cisco replied with a grin. "Check it." He started gesturing toward the different parts of the helmet Barry was wearing, at which point Kara tuned him out, realizing that none of that was anything she needed to be concerned with. She also did Barry the courtesy of ignoring whatever conversation he had with Caitlin while she was busy fitting him with various sensors, since it was clearly private and, judging by their body language, incredibly awkward.

"Mr. Allen," Wells said when the final preparations were complete. "While I for one am eager to see the full range of your powers, I do caution restraint." Barry nodded and blew out a nervous breath, clearly trying to clear his head and prepare himself for whatever was about to happen next. He took a few steps forward and dropped down into a crouch, his fingertips against the ground, leaning forward to put his weight on the balls of his feet, assuming the position of a runner at the start of a race. Then, at some unspoken signal, he shot forward at incredible, _impossible_ speed, becoming a red blur as he raced down the runway. Kara watched this all happen with wide eyes, astonished and troubled. Whatever she'd expected the effect of the lightning bolt to have been, it had definitely not been _this_. Judging by the progress of the red blur that was Barry down the runway, he was moving at least three times as fast as she did at her top speed, if not more.

As Kara watched, the red blur faltered, then resolved itself back into Barry as he slammed into a bunch of water barrels stacked at the end of the runway, sending them flying every which way and water spraying everywhere. Kara cried out in fear and was racing to be at Barry's side before she could think about what she was doing, before she had time to remember that the other people around didn't know that she had powers.

"Barry," she breathed, dropping into a crouch at his side. "Are you alright?" Barry shook his head.

"I think I broke something," he said in a strained voice. He shifted on the pile of fallen barrels he was lying on, trying to get up, then groaned and fell back. "Make that multiple somethings."

"Here," Kara said softly. "Let me help you." She slung an arm across Barry's back and slowly and carefully helped him upright.

"Can you stand?" she asked, worry lacing her voice.

"Yeah, I think so," Barry replied, grimacing with pain. He got to his feet, swaying for a moment but managing to stay upright. He shifted around and winced.

"I think my arm's broken," he said. By this time, the others had reached them. They arranged themselves in a loose u shape, and Kara couldn't help but notice the sidelong glances they were casting at her.

"What are we supposed to do?" she asked, referring to Barry's apparently extensive injuries. "I mean, I'm assuming we can't take him to the hospital." Everyone shook their heads in answer.

"They can take me back to STAR Labs," Barry spoke up, nodding to the others. "I'm sure they'll be able to handle things from there."

"Are you sure?" Kara asked, still worried.

"I'm sure," Barry confirmed. "We've got it from here." When Kara didn't move, he added, "Go home, Kara. I'll be fine." She nodded and stepped aside to let Cisco, Caitlin, and Wells walk him back to the van. Only once they were on their way did Kara herself leave, heading for home, spending the duration feeling troubled over Barry's new powers might mean for both their futures.


	11. Deepening Mystery

"It looks like you had a distal radius fracture," Caitlin said in a familiarly clinical tone, a puzzled expression on her face.

"Had?" Barry asked.

"It's healed," Caitlin explained. "In three hours."

"How is that even possible?" Barry asked. Already the capabilities and possible implications of his new powers were stacking higher and higher.

"We don't know," Caitlin said. "Yet."

"You really need to learn how to stop," Cisco chimed in, entering the room with Wells just behind him.

"What happened out there today?" he asked. "You were moving pretty well, and then something caused you to lose focus."

"I just… started thinking," Barry said. "About how monumental these powers are, and what they might mean for the future. For _my_ future."

"Well, unfortunately the only advice I can offer is to try not to think about it too much," Wells told him. "Just take it one day at a time."

"Thank you," Barry said. "I'll keep that in mind." Checking his phone, he added, "I need to go meet Iris" and hopped down from the exam chair.

"Wait," Wells called out when he reached the door. He stopped and turned to look at him curiously.

"We need to talk about your sister," Wells said.

"Later," Barry promised, though he was already worrying about just how much of Kara's secret he would have to reveal after what Wells and the others had seen her do at Ferris Air. Wells nodded in silent dismissal, and Barry continued on his way to meet Iris.

"Can I help you with something, Detective?" Iris asked a short time later, stepping out of Jitters to meet Detective Thawne. Barry had been about to cross the street when Iris had come out of Jitters, but now he remained where he was, not wanting to interrupt whatever she had going on with Detective Thawne.

"You can stop acting like you can't stand me when your dad's around," he said, getting to his feet as Iris approached the table where he'd been sitting.

"Awww, but I like having a boyfriend who isn't shot to death," Iris said with a smile, kissing him. Barry watched it happen, feeling like a creep but unable to tear his eyes away. After a moment, Iris spotted him and pulled slowly away from her boyfriend.

"Barry's here," she told him, "so I have to go. I'll see you later." Thawne nodded, and Iris raced across the street to where Barry was waiting.

"You can't tell my dad," she told him as they were walking down the street, side by side, not long after. "He doesn't know about me and Eddie."

"It doesn't seem like anyone's in on the secret," Barry muttered bitterly, unable to stop a wave of jealousy from overtaking him.

"I was gonna tell you," Iris said insistently. "While you were in the hospital, Eddie covered my father's shifts so that we could both be with you. I thanked him with a cup of coffee and things just kind of… happened. And it's _good_."

"Dating your partner's daughter?" Barry asked, still feeling bitter. "Isn't that against department regulations?"

"Why are you so upset?" Iris asked.

"I just don't like lying to your dad, you know?" Barry replied, which was in and of itself a lie.

Their conversation was cut short by the distant sound of police sirens and screeching tires. The sound grew louder and louder, until a sleek black car came into view, barreling down the road with a police car hot on its tail. It sped straight toward them, nearly running them down. Barry dived out of its way, taking Iris with him. He watched as the police car crashed into a dumpster and the car that had nearly run them down continued on its way down the highway. Getting to his feet, Barry sped off after it, thinking only that someone had to catch its driver. He sped past car after car on the highway until he drew even with the one he was chasing. He glanced inside the driver's side window and was shocked to see that the driver of the car was Clyde Mardon. The next thing he knew, he was inside the car, wrestling with Mardon for the wheel. Barry grabbed it and yanked, making the car spin and flip upside down. Behind them, driver's blew their horns in annoyance at the sudden blockade in the road. Managing to struggle of the wrecked car, Barry saw Mardon about to simply walk away and get away scot free with whatever it was he had just done.

"Hey, Mardon!" he shouted, determined to stop him. He charged forward, trying to catch Mardon, but he made fog appear in the road and disappeared into it before Barry could catch him. A car came barreling out of Mardon's fog bank and crashed into an embankment, exploding into a fireball upon impact. Barry quickly sped out of the way of other oncoming vehicles and ran off to find help.

"That poor man," Iris said later, at the scene. "The way that fog came in… I have never seen anything like it." Barry stared at her. He hadn't realized that she'd seen what had happened after Mardon had almost run them down.

"Barry!" Joe called out, running toward them. "Iris!"

"I'm alright, Dad," Iris reassured him.

"What the hell were you thinking, having her out here?" Joe demanded, rounding on Barry, seeming not to realize that Barry hadn't wanted any of this to happen.

"No, no, no-" Iris started to say, jumping to his defense.

"And I _told_ you, when you see danger, you run the other way," Joe interjected, cutting her off. It was clear he was upset with both of them. "You're not a cop."

"Because you wouldn't let me," Iris snapped.

"You're damn right," Joe shot back.

"Joe, I need to talk to you," Barry said urgently, both because he was trying to defuse the situation and because he thought he should know what had happened on the road.

"It can wait," Joe said, still angry.

"No, now," Barry insisted. He led Joe a short distance away from Iris so she wouldn't overhear.

"I know who did this," he said when they were a good distance away. Joe nodded.

"It's Clyde Mardon," Barry went on. "I know everyone thinks he died after the STAR Labs explosion, but he _is_ alive, all right, something happened to him that night. I… I think he can control the weather. The recent robberies, they all happened during freak meteorological events, and when I _just_ confronted Mardon, the street was instantly enveloped in fog." He paused, searching for Joe's reaction. He was stone faced.

"Of course you don't believe me," he said, realization dawning. "You never believe me."

"Okay, you want to do this _now_?" Joe asked. "Out here? Fine. Mardon is dead. There is no controlling the weather, Barry, just like there was no lightning storm in your bedroom that night when you were eleven."

"Yes, there was," Barry insisted for what felt like the millionth time since that day.

"No, there wasn't!" Joe shouted. "It was just your overactive imagination! There's no such thing as men made of lighting or people who can move faster than light!"

"Dad, enough!" Iris said, jumping to Barry's defense once more.

"Uh uh, Iris," Joe scolded, gesturing her back. Turning his attention back to Barry, he said, "I have done my best to mentor you since you joined the police department, and I have never asked for anything in return, not even a thank you, but what I do ask now is you for _once_ in your _life_ see things as they are!" Barry shook his head angrily, his jaw clenched tight, and turned and stormed away. If Joe wouldn't listen to him, maybe someone at STAR Labs would.


	12. An Offer

Back at home for the day, Kara was still having trouble coming to grips with what she'd witnessed at Ferris Air. Barry's powers had enormous, far-reaching implications, especially since he didn't seem inclined to believe that he needed to hide them and go on living a normal life the way Kara had been doing with her own powers since the day she had arrived on Earth. Mulling it over further, she realized that part of her problem was that she lacked a fundamental understanding of exactly what Barry's powers were. Knowing that the only place she was going to be able to gain that understanding was STAR Labs, Kara headed for there, via normal human transportation this time.

"A dimensional barrier ruptured, unleashing unknown energies into our world," Wells was saying as Kara approached the Cortex a short time later. "Antimatter, dark energy, x elements-"

"Those are all theoretical," Barry interjected.

"And how theoretical are you?" Wells countered. After a pause, he continued, "We mapped the dispersion throughout and around Central City. Though we have no way of knowing what or… _who_ was affected, we've been searching for other metahumans like yourself."

"Metahumans?" Barry asked.

"That's what we're calling them," Caitlin explained.

"I saw one today," Barry said. "He's a bank robber, and he can control the weather."

"This just keeps getting cooler," Cisco interjected.

"This is _not_ cool, alright?" Barry said in an urgent, panicked voice. "A man _died_. Mardon must have gotten his powers the same way I did- from the storm cloud. He's still out there! We have to stop him before he hurts anyone else!" At that, Kara heard footsteps heading for the door. Barry's, no doubt.

"Barry!" Wells called out, and the footsteps stopped. "This is a job for the police."

"I work for the police," Barry insisted.

"As a forensic assistant," Wells pointed out.

"You're responsible for this," Barry said. "For him."

"What's important is you!" Wells shouted. "Not me. I lost everything. I lost my company, I lost my reputation, I lost my _freedom_, and then _you_ broke your arm, and it healed in _three hours_. Inside your body could be a map to a whole new world- genetic therapies, vaccines, treasures buried deep within your cells, and we cannot risk losing everything because you want to go out and play hero! You're not a hero. You're just a young man who was struck by lightning." After that, Barry came storming out of the Cortex, shoving past Kara without acknowledging her presence in the slightest. Kara waited a few minutes to give everyone Barry had left behind time to cool off before she entered the Cortex herself.

"How much of that did you hear?" Wells asked when he saw her come in.

"Enough," Kara replied simply. Taking a seat in one of the rolling office chairs scattered around the room, she said, "You're making a mistake."

"Barry is too valuable to risk," Wells insisted, shaking his head.

"Barry is a _person_," Kara said, anger slipping into her voice at the way Wells was talking about her brother like he was an object, a tool to be used as he saw fit, "not a piece of tech. He's a person who makes his own choices. Besides, you… you don't understand him. Not like I do."

"Well then, please," Wells said, a hint of sarcasm in his voice. "Enlighten us."

"Barry is stubborn," Kara replied. "If there's something that he thinks he should or needs to do, and you tell him that he can't do it, that just makes him want to do it even more. And if you won't help him, he'll find someone else who will. He'll get Joe to help him, or he'll, I don't know, run to Starling City and track down the Arrow." This last Kara offered as a ridiculous suggestion, the most extreme measure Barry could possibly take, but it occured her even as she said it that he might do exactly that. Oliver Queen was, after all, the person who had inspired Barry to use his new powers to help people, to be a hero, at least as far as Kara was able to discern from what Barry had told her about Oliver and what she had observed of Barry with his powers so far.

"He's going to do this," she went on. "With or without you."

"Then what do you suggest we do, if we _apparently_ can't stop him?" Wells asked, an angry, bitter tone in his voice.

"Let me help," Kara replied. "Let me join him in his new found crusade."

"We all saw what she did at Ferris Air," Cisco spoke up, addressing Wells and Caitlin. "She's plenty fast enough to keep up with Barry."

"I'm more than just fast," Kara put in, intentionally cryptic, already fearing just how much of her powers she would have to reveal and the questions they would lead to. "And if Barry's so insistent on being a hero, I'm the best person to prevent him from getting himself hurt or killed." There was a long silence while the group, but especially Kara, waited for Wells' answer. They couldn't do any of this without his consent and his help.

"Alright," he conceded at last. "But you'd better hurry and go track him down. Wherever he went after he left here, I have a feeling that he's getting himself into trouble already."


	13. Help in the Fight

"So, that's my story," Barry said as he stood on a rooftop in Starling City, wrapping up the tale he'd just spent the last half hour recounting to Oliver. "I spent my whole life searching for the impossible, _never_ imagining that I would _become _the impossible."

"So why come to me?" Oliver asked. He'd been standing at the edge of the roof with his back to Barry, looking out over the city, but now he turned to face him. "Something tells me you didn't just run 600 miles to say hi to a friend."

"All my life I've wanted to… just do more," Barry said. "_Be_ more. And now I am, and the first chance I get to help someone, I screw up. What if Wells is right? What if I'm not a hero? What if I'm just some guy who got struck by lightning?"

"I don't think that bolt of lightning struck you, Barry," Oliver said solemnly, his voice carrying the weight of the knowledge of another person's character that came from them saving your life. "I think it chose you."

"I'm just not sure I'm like you, Oliver," Barry replied. "I don't know if I can be some… vigilante."

"You can be better," Oliver told him. "Because you can inspire people in a way that I never could. Watching over your city like a guardian angel, making a difference, saving people… in a flash." He turned away from Barry for a moment, and when he turned back to face him once more, he was wearing the mask that Barry had made for him, and he couldn't help but feel a small glow of pride at the sight of it.

"Take your own advice," Oliver said with a smile. "Wear a mask." Then he turned and swan dived off the edge of the roof, firing a grappling line into the building across the street as he fell and swinging around to land with his feet braced against its side.

"Cool," Barry muttered to himself, and then he turned and ran back to Central City.

"I've been going over unsolved cases from the past nine months," Barry told Wells and the team at STAR Labs a few days later, "and there's been a sharp increase in unexplained deaths and missing people. Your metahumans have been busy."

"Now, I'm not blaming you," he went on, noticing the looks exchanged between them. "I know you didn't mean for any of this to happen. I know you all lost something." He paused for a moment to reflect on that loss before he said, "But I need your help to catch Mardon, and anyone else out there like him. I can't do it without you." There was a long, slightly tense silence while the team considered his words.

"If we're going to do this," Cisco spoke up at last, "I have something that might help." He led them over to a raised worktable covered with a tarp and yanked the tarp off to reveal a dark red bodysuit with an attached cowl and boots, that, when worn, would cover a person from head to toe.

"Something I've been playing with," he said, gesturing toward it. "It's designed to replace the turnouts firefighters traditionally wear. I thought if STAR Labs could do something nice for the community, maybe people wouldn't be so angry at Doctor Wells anymore."

"How's it going to help me?" Barry asked.

"It's made of a reinforced tripolymer," Cisco explained. "It's heat and abrasive resistant, so it should be able to withstand your moving at high velocity speeds, and the aerodynamic design should help you maintain control. Plus, it has built in sensors, so we can track your vitals and stay in contact with you from here.

"Thanks," Barry said. "Now, how do we find Mardon?"

"I've re-tasked STAR Labs' satellites to track meteorological abnormalities over Central City," Caitlin put in. In the back of his mind, Barry noted that they all seemed to have changed their minds about helping him awfully fast. He wondered if his sister had had something to do with that. He refocused on what Caitlin was saying as she went on, "We just got a ping. Atmospheric pressure dropped twenty millibars in a matter of seconds. I've tracked it to a farm just west of the city." Barry instantly what farm that must have been- the one where Mardon and his brother had been hiding out before the particle accelerator explosion.

"Let's go," he said, grabbing the suit from the worktable. "We don't have a lot of time."

When Barry arrived at the farm- just in time to stop Joe and Eddie from being crushed by flying debris- he found Mardon at the center of a massive tornado.

"Barry," Cisco said in his comm. "Barry, this thing is getting closer. Wind speeds are 200 miles per hour and increasing." Barry didn't answer him, too busy trying to catch his breath. He hadn't had to sustain his speed for this long before, and it was taking more out of him that he'd expected.

"Barry!" Cisco said. "Barry, can you hear me?"

"Yeah," Barry managed to reply. "Loud and clear."

"If it keeps up, it could become an F5 tornado," Cisco told him, prompting him to stare at the massive tornado Mardon was in the center of and wonder how it could _possibly_ get any worse.

"And it's headed for the city!" he shouted over the roar of the wind. "How do I stop it?" He received no answer.

"Guys!" he shouted. An idea occurring to him, he asked "What if I unravel it?"

"How the hell are you going to do that?" Caitlin asked.

"I'll run around it in the opposite direction, cut off its legs," Barry shouted in reply.

"He'd have to clock 700 miles per hour to do that," he heard Cisco said, his voice in his comm quiet because he wasn't speaking directly to him.

"Your body may not be able to handle those speeds," Caitlin warned him. "You'll die."

"I have to try," he insisted. Then he took off racing around the bottom of the tornado as fast as he could manage. But it wasn't enough. He could feel himself weakening, his energy flagging, and when Mardon saw what he was doing and shoved a gust of wind in his direction, he wasn't fast enough to dodge it, and he was sent tumbling across the ground, away from the tornado.

"He's too strong!" he shouted, struggling to his feet.

"You can do this, Barry," Wells said in his ear. "You're right- I'm responsible for all of this. So many people have been hurt because of me, and when I looked at you all I saw was another potential victim of my hubris, and yes, I created this madness, but you, Barry, you can stop it. _You can do this_. Now run, Barry, run!" Mustering up what strength he had left, Barry charged toward the tornado once again, running around its base, faster and faster, until it was just him and Mardon, sprawled in the circle of devastation left behind by the tornado's path.

"Barry?" Caitlin asked.

"Hey!" Mardon called out before Barry could answer her. He got to his feet and turned around to face him.

"I didn't think there was anyone else like me," Mardon said, voice fervent, pointing a gun at him.

"I'm not like you," Barry told him. "You're a murderer." Mardon went to shoot him, but two gunshots rang out in the sudden quiet left behind by the absence of the tornado's roar, and he went down, two bullets in his chest. Barry turned to see Joe running toward him, his gun still out.

"Barry!" Caitlin said urgently.

"It's over," Barry said. "I'm okay." He fell to his knees, too exhausted to hold himself upright anymore, and the next thing he knew, Joe was kneeling in front of him. They sat there like that, staring at each other in stunned silence, until reinforcements began to arrive from the CCPD to take care of Mardon and deal with the aftermath of what he had done.

"What you can do," Joe said as all this was going on. "It was the lightning bolt?"

"More or less," Barry said.

"I'm sorry, Barry," Joe said. "I'm sorry I didn't believe you, and I called you crazy for chasing the impossible. But you really did see something in your house that night when you were eleven." Barry nodded, relieved that someone _finally _believed him.

"I need you to promise me something," Joe went on. "I don't want you telling Iris about anything you can do. _Any_ of it. I want her safe. Promise me."

"Yeah," Barry agreed.

A few days later, he went to visit his parents, to make up for not having done so when he woke up from his coma. He told about everything that had happened over the last couple of days, or a slightly sanitized version of it, anyway. He didn't want to worry them too much. As he headed toward home afterward, he found himself replaying what Oliver had said to him that night in Starling City in his mind, and thought that just might have given him an idea for what to call himself under his new crime fighting identity.


	14. Questions of Heroism

"So," Cisco said. He clicked the pen in his hand a few times in a businesslike fashion and looked at Kara expectantly. "What are you thinking?"

"Um, I don't know," Kara said hesitantly. She'd been the one to propose joining Barry in his hero crusade, but now that that day was looming, she found herself reluctant to open herself up to that kind of exposure. The habit of keeping her true self hidden and living a normal life was so deeply ingrained that it was proving extremely difficult to break.

"Well, what exactly are your abilities?" Cisco asked, misjudging the cause of Kara's indecisiveness. "I mean, you're fast- we saw that at Ferris Air- but also said that you're more than just fast. So what else can you do? Knowing that will make it easier to design your suit to fit your needs." Kara sighed. It seemed there would be simply no chance of getting around her habit against revealing herself with anything resembling ease. She was in too deep to back out now, and she doubted it would work if she tried. Cisco didn't seem like the type to just let this go. The other problem, then, was figuring out how to explain exactly what she was and what she could do.

"You've heard of Superman, right?" she asked, finally deciding on how to approach it.

"Uh-huh," Cisco confirmed, nodding. "Metropolis' resident superhero. I'm familiar."

"Well, he and I come from the same place," Kara said. "He's my cousin."

"Your _cousin_?" Cisco asked disbelievingly. "But… he's an alien. Wait, you're an alien?"

"Yes," Kara said, nodding. "I would kind of have to be if I'm related to Superman, wouldn't I?"

"True, true," Cisco conceded, nodding. Then something seemed to occur to him, because he asked "Is Barry an alien?"

"No," Kara said, shaking her head, chuckling in spite of herself. "He's not. His parents found me after my pod crashed in the suburbs near their house, and they took me in. Barry and I are adoptive siblings."

"Uh-huh," Cisco said.

"And before you say anything," Kara went on, anger edging her voice preemptively of the response she was expecting to receive, "that doesn't make him any less my brother."

"Right, I get it," Cisco said, holding his hands up in a gesture of surrender. "Family doesn't end with blood."

"Exactly," Kara agreed, satisfied.

"So," Cisco said after a moment, "if you're Superman's cousin and come from the same planet as him, does that mean you have all the same abilities as him?"

"Yes," Kara said. "That's why I told you about us being related. I figured it was quicker than just listing all the things I can do."

"So," Cisco said. "Flight?"

"Uh-huh," Kara confirmed.

"Invulnerability? Except in the presence of kryptonite, of course?"

"Yes."

"Super strength?"

"Yep."

"Freeze breath? Heat vision?"

"Yes and yes."

"X- ray vision?"

"Mmmhmm." Cisco let out a low whistle.

"Damn," he said. "This might be the coolest thing I ever do in my whole life." Kara glared at him, frustrated by his lack of seriousness.

"I'm just saying," he said. "It's not every day that I get to design a super suit for an amazingly powerful alien being."

"You designed one for Barry," Kara countered.

"No, I didn't," Cisco argued. "I mean, yeah, that's what it's being used as _now_, but that's not the purpose I had in mind for it when I originally designed it. Besides, Barry's not Superman's cousin." Kara rolled her eyes.

"I never should have told you that," she muttered. "Now that's the only way you'll ever see me, and I'm going to be spending the rest of time being compared to him and trying to live up to a standard I can't possibly reach."

"I don't think that's true at all," Cisco replied. "I'm not gonna _only_ see you as Superman's cousin, because I started getting to know you before I knew that you were. And it's not like he's some unreachable standard for you, either. After all, anything he can do, you can do. Right?"

"Right," Kara agreed.

"So don't worry about him," Cisco advised. "Just do your own thing. Anything else will come with time."

"That was some surprisingly sage advice," Kara said.

"What can I say?" Cisco replied. "I contain multitudes."

"Apparently," Kara said. They lapsed into silence, and Cisco took up his pen and started idly sketching designs on the pad of paper in front of him.

"Here," Kara said after watching him work for a few minutes. "Let me see." Cisco passed her the pad and pen without a word. She added her family crest to his sketches and passed the pad and pen back to him.

"Superman's symbol?" he asked, studying her addition to his sketches with a puzzled frown. "I thought you didn't want people to compare you to him."

"It's not his symbol," Kara explained, shaking her head. "It's our family crest, the crest of the House of El. And I have as much right to bear it as he does.

"Hmmm," Cisco said thoughtfully, nodding along to Kara's explanation, though Kara wasn't sure if he _really _understood it.

"Oh, and one more thing," Kara said. When Cisco looked at her questioningly, she gestured toward his sketches and added, "Lose the skirt. I'm not a schoolgirl."


	15. Allies and Enemies

"I have something to show you," Kara announced, striding into the Cortex and interrupting Barry's training. He flinched in spite of himself, startled by her sudden appearance. Until this very moment, he'd had no idea that she was involved in any of this.

"What is it?" Barry asked. Instead of answering, Kara glanced over at Cisco, who was still standing by the ping pong table, paddle in hand.

"You're lucky I stayed up all night working on it," he told Kara. "Otherwise your big reveal would fall apart right now."

"Working on what?" Barry asked. "Big reveal of what?"

"Follow me," Cisco said by way of answer. He set his ping pong paddle down on the table and led them both over to the same elevated work table that he'd had Barry's suit on just a few weeks before. Now, as then, it was covered in a tarp, and now, as then, he pulled the tarp off with a flourish, this time to reveal a dark blue jumpsuit with a gold belt, tall red boots, and a red cape. Emblazoned on the chest of the jumpsuit was a familiar symbol.

"This is yours?" Barry asked, turning to his sister. She nodded.

"But why?" Barry asked. "What happened to keeping yourself hidden and living a normal life?"

"Because if you're determined to do this hero thing, I'm the best person to keep you from getting yourself from getting yourself killed," Kara replied. "You're my brother, Barry. It's my job to look out for you."

"Besides," she went on after a brief pause, apparently to collect her thoughts, "if you can have a secret identity, so can I. Everyone will be so busy staring at Kara Zor-El that they won't even think to look twice at Kara Danvers."

"We're going to have to work on the name," Cisco shouted from the bank of computers in the center of the Cortex, where he had moved to while Barry and Kara had been talking, "but right now, we've got an armed robbery going down at 4th and Collins!" Barry looked over at Kara.

"You ready to do this?" he asked.

"After you," Kara said with a smile, gesturing toward the door. In seconds, Barry had his suit on and was heading toward the location of the robbery, trusting that Kara was as close behind him as she could be.

When they reached the robbery in progress, Barry glanced to his left to see Kara in mid-flight, her outstretched arms even with his shoulder, her cape fluttering in the wind. With a few unspoken signals, they split off from each other, Barry heading to the right to take out the robbers on the road, Kara going left to take out the ones on the armored truck that was clearly their target, stopping the robbery altogether. Barry was just starting to allow himself to feel triumphant when everything went wrong- one of the robbers, in apparent panic at the thought of being apprehended, shot the driver of the armored truck. Barry felt his stomach twist with dread in the same moment he heard Kara curse in Kryptonian.

"Where's the nearest hospital?" he shouted into his comm.

"St Andrews," Caitlin answered. "Seven blocks north, two east." Barry thought quickly, assessing his strategy. The driver was in need of urgent medical attention, but the robbers were getting away.

"Call the ER, tell them they have an incoming GSW!" he told Caitlin, coming to a decision. To Kara, he said, "I'll take care of the driver. You take care of the robbers." Kara nodded, and Barry scooped up the driver of the armored car in his arms and raced to the hospital.

"Did we at least catch the people responsible for what happened back there?" he asked, reconvening with the team back at STAR Labs a short time later, after getting the driver of the armored car to the hospital and making sure he would be okay. Kara shook her head sadly.

"They got away from me," she said. "I'm sorry, Barry."

"It's fine," Barry said.

"It's not all bad news, though," Kara went on. "I saw one of their faces."

"Really?" Barry asked, brightening. Kara nodded, and he said, "Could you give me his description? I can head to the precinct and pass it on to Joe." Kara nodded a second time and provided it in a quick, concise manner, aware of the necessity of finding this guy quickly. Barry nodded his thanks, and then he was off again, heading to the precinct.

"There," he told Joe a short time later, flipping through the mug shots he'd brought him until he found the one that matched the description Kara had given him. For the sake of maintaining her anonymity for as long as possible, however, he'd told Joe that _he'd_ been the one who had seen one of the robbers' faces. As far as anyone outside of STAR Labs knew, he had stopped the armed car robbery all by his lonesome. "That's him."

"That's Leonard Snart," Joe said, examining the mug shot Barry had singled out.

"Leonard?" Barry asked, making a face. "That's almost as bad as Bartholomew."

"Snart ain't sexy either," Joe replied. A pause, then he continued, "Snart's father was a cop. A bad cop. He took his anger out on his kids, until he went to prison."

"Snart's dad's in prison too?" Barry remarked. "We should start a club."

"He shows up like every six months," Joe said, ignoring Barry's comment. "He cases a job for weeks before he makes his move. Then, he does the job, gets away."

"That was before the Streak was around," Barry said. He hated to keep taking all the credit, but he was determined to maintain his sister's anonymity until she specifically told him to do otherwise.

"Did you just refer to yourself in the third person?" Joe asked.

"I referred to the Streak," Barry corrected. Thinking that now might be the perfect time to test out the new name that Oliver had inadvertently given him the idea for, he went on, "Which I'm pretty sure I can top. I've been thinking of a new name. What do you think of the Fla-"

"Coffee break!" Iris interrupted, appearing apparently from out of nowhere, coffees in hand. "I thought I would bring Central City's finest java over to Central City's finest."

"Thanks, I'm off caffeine," Joe said coldly, walking away and leaving Iris still holding the coffee that had been meant for him.

"My dad's been mad at me ever since I told him about me and Eddie," she said.

"No, you mean he's mad at you because you _didn't_ tell him," Barry replied as they headed toward his lab.

"Uh, first, that sounds like you're taking his side," Iris replied. "And second, you know how he does this whole 'I'm not speaking to you, but I have a whole bag of judgemental looks I'm gonna try out on you later'?"

"Yeah, I've been on the receiving end of those a few times," Barry commiserated, nodding.

"Speaking of communications, or lack thereof," Iris went on, "after all of these journalism classes, I got an idea. I started a blog."

"All right, what's it about?" Barry asked. "Your brownie obsession? Because you probably shouldn't broadcast that."

"No, something important," Iris said insistently. "Something that Central City needs to know about. The Streak. He's out there, Barry. Rumor has it he stopped an armed car robbery earlier. I was hoping that I could take a look at the file, and-"

"I'm not a liberty to discuss an ongoing police investigation with you," Barry interjected, remembering his promise to Joe and trying to steer Iris off of her current course.

"Since when, Mr. Blabbermouth?" Iris retorted.

"Take it from someone who's been investigating the impossible since they were eleven," Barry said evasively. "Blogging about this is only gonna bring the crazies to your front door."

"My blog is anonymous," Iris countered.

"All right, well, anonymous or not, it's not safe," Barry insisted as they reached his lab. "You never know what kind of weirdos are out there trolling on the Internet."

"I can vouch for that," a familiar voice said as they entered the lab. "The Internet is full of weirdos. And nerd rage. Lots and lots of nerd rage." Felicity was standing in the middle of the lab, almost directly beneath the skylight.

"Hi," she said to Iris. "Felicity Smoak."  
"Iris West," Iris replied.

"Barry Allen," Barry said unthinkingly. When Felicity and Iris both turned to stare at him, he hastily added, "But you both already knew that." To Iris, he said, "Felicity is-"

"The girl you met in Starling City," Iris interjected. "The computerer, right? You two worked on one of Barry's unexplainable cases."

"Which, long story short," Felicity said. "Explainable." Pointing up at the skylight, she asked, "So, the lightning? Came through here?"

"Yeah," Barry said, the word coming out as a sigh, overwhelmed as he was by the suddenness of the subject change.

"I'll leave you two to talk," Iris said, backing out of the room. She flashed Barry a conspiratorial smile on her way out, which puzzled him. He couldn't figure out what she was trying to imply with it.

"And this is where my team monitors the police bands for criminal activity," Barry said as he entered the Cortex with Felicity in tow the following day, wrapping up the tour he'd been giving her of STAR Labs. They'd spent the previous day, after Iris had left, talking about Barry's new powers and the ins and outs of life as a crimefighter- or of life as someone who associated with one, which was what had led to this tour- Barry had promised Felicity that he'd show her where he worked and introduce her to the people he worked with, excepting Kara, who she had apparently already met while visiting him when he'd been in his coma.

"Check it out," he went on. "We have our own satellite."

"I know," Felicity replied. "I have hacked into it from time to time."

"Rude," Cisco put in.

"It is of course _so_ wonderful to see you again, Felicity," Caitlin said. "I'm just wondering how much of our… operation she needs to know about."

"I'm good at keeping secrets," Felicity reassured her.

"Yeah, Felicity works with the Arrow," Barry blurted out.

"Sweet!" Cisco said.

"And you apparently are not," Felicity said exasperatedly.

"Of course, now it's all making sense," Cisco said, walking over to her. "You know who the Arrow is." Turning to Barry, he asked "Wait, do _you_ know who the Arrow is?"

"Uh…" Barry said, trailing off as he quietly panicked and his mind went blank as a result. He _did_ know who the Arrow was, but that wasn't his secret to tell any more than it was Dig's or Felicity's.

"Let's just say that my team has a similar setup, but with more pointy objects," Felicity jumped in, coming to his rescue.

"Welcome, Ms. Smoak." Wells' voice came from behind them.

"Doctor Wells?" Felicity asked, turning to face him. "_The_ Doctor Wells?"

"Please, call me Harrison, Felicity," Wells replied.

"Oh, you know who I am," Felicity said, sounding surprised.

"Ranked second in the National Informative Technology Competition at age nineteen, graduated from MIT with masters degrees in cyber security and computer sciences," Wells recited. "I know who you are. I keep an eye out for promising talent in scientific fields. It's what brought me Cisco and Caitlin, and I foresaw great things from you." There was a hint of disappointment in his voice, as if he thought she had squandered her considerable talent spending so many years working a low level IT position in the now bankrupt Queen Consolidated.

_If only he knew the half of what Felicity's been doing_, Barry thought. Trying to lighten the mood, he said, "Speaking of great things, want to see something cool?" before leading Felicity to the room where they kept the specialized treadmill they used to test his speed.

Later, after the demonstration of the treadmill and the rather embarassing incident of having injured himself trying to run on it backwards, Barry brought up Iris' suggestion that he bring Felicity along to trivia night to the person in question. She readily agreed to come along, stating that she so rarely got to do anything at night that wasn't work. With that plan in place, Barry decided that he was going to do his best to enjoy himself despite the romantic overtones that Iris had clearly intended when she'd made that suggestion in the first place. His only goal for the event was to have fun spending time with the friend who, by consequence of there being 600 miles between Starling City and Central City, he so rarely got to see.


	16. A Lesson in Trust

Barry was almost glad when trivia night was cut short by a report of Leonard Snart robbing the Central City Museum. Despite his best intentions to the contrary, Iris' continued insistence that he ask Felicity out had pretty much ruined any chance he'd had of having fun. He had absolutely no desire to get in the middle of whatever the hell it was that was going on between Felicity and Oliver, but he didn't bother trying to explain that to Iris because he didn't know _how_. By the time Eddie had gotten the text about the sighting of Snart, Barry had been starting to look for an out, for absolutely anything that would give him an excuse to leave.

"I'll cover for you," Felicity told him, following him out the door.

"All right, what are you going to say?" Barry asked.

"I usually tell people that Oliver is at a nightclub, with a girl, or nursing a hangover," Felicity replied.

"None of which will work for me," Barry pointed out, though in the back of his mind, he was wondering, _And people believe that?_ Apparently, Oliver worked a lot harder at maintaining his playboy persona for the sake of protecting his secret identity than he'd thought.

"Oh!" Felicity exclaimed as a solution apparently came to her suddenly. "I tell them something happened with your sister."

"What _kind _of something?" Barry asked warily. "Because I don't want Iris to worry-"

"Just go!" Felicity interjected, making a shooing gesture. Barry went. On his to STAR Labs to put on his suit, he called Kara on her cell phone, since he assumed that she wouldn't have a comm on her while she was working her day to day job.

"I need you," he said when she picked up. "Leonard Snart is robbing the Central City Museum. Meet me there as soon as you can." He waited to hear her confirmation of the plan before hanging up and continuing on his way.

Barry arrived at the museum moments later and immediately skidded on a patch of ice on the road outside. He recovered his footing and frowned, wondering how in the hell there was ice on the street in the middle of the evening on a warm day. He didn't have time to think about it too much, though, because a moment later there was a rumbling sound like a sonic boom, and Kara came in for a hard, neat landing beside him. Together, they searched for Snart, and immediately spotted him running into the theater across the street from the museum, Joe hot on his heels. Barry and Kara quickly followed after them, running inside the building in time to see Snart fire something that looked like a tongue of white flame from the strange looking weapon in his hand, sending it straight toward Joe. Barry threw himself in front of him, and the white flame struck him in the chest. In an instant, he felt freezing cold, like he'd been outside in the middle of winter for hours without any cold weather gear. His built up momentum made it impossible for him to stop himself or change his trajectory, and he slammed against a column before crashing to the ground.

"Are you okay?" Joe asked, rushing to his side.

"Aggghh," Barry groaned in reply. "It burns."

"Time for a test run!" Snart shouted, filling Barry with dread. Whatever he meant by that, it couldn't be anything good. "Let's see just how good the two of you are!" Out of the corner of his eye, Barry saw Joe cast a puzzled look in his direction, which confused him until he remembered that he didn't know about Kara- or, more specifically, he didn't know that Kara had joined him in his superhero crusade. He didn't know that two people had stopped the armed car robbery earlier, but Snart obviously did. Barry watched in horror as he fired his strange weapon at nearby innocent bystanders, one by one, then felt relief as each time as a red and blue blur that he knew to be Kara moved Snart's unfortunate targets out of the way just in time.

The battle between Snart and Kara moved into an open theater nearby. Barry forced himself to his feet, moving as fast as he could manage while still feeling the effects of Snart's weapon. He entered the theater in time to see Kara shove an usher out of the way of a beam from Snart's weapon only to be struck by it herself just as Barry had been not long before.

"No!" Barry screamed, rushing to his sister's side as she fell to the floor. In the periphery of his vision, he saw Snart slip out of an emergency exit, but right now the only thing he cared about was Kara.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"Yeah," Kara said in a strained voice, struggling upright. There was a thin coating of ice over the emblem on her chest. "I'm fine. Invulnerable, remember?" A pause, then she added, "But it looks like you're _not _okay." She looked around for Snart, realized he was gone, and went on, "Let's get to STAR Labs so they can fix you up." Barry nodded and helped Kara to her feet, and then they were off.

"It's still numb," he informed Caitlin as she was examining the spot where the strange white flame from Snart's weapon had struck him a short time later.

"It's presenting itself as third degree frostbite," she told him in reply, frowning, though whether in concern or bewilderment, he couldn't tell.

"I thought he had hyper healing," Felicity put in.

"It's been slowed," Caitlin replied. To Barry, she said, "If your cells weren't regenerating at the rate they are, your blood vessels would have frozen solid and the nerve damage would have been permanent. You're lucky to be alive."

"Snar wasn't another metahuman," Barry said. "He had some kind of gun. It froze things. It slowed me down, enough that Kara had to pick up my slack, and she could have been killed because of it."

"According to his records, Snart didn't even bother to finish high school," Felicity spoke up, surprising absolutely no one with the fact that she knew that information off hand, "so how did he manage to build a handheld high tech snow machine?"

"STAR Labs built the cold gun," Doctor Wells admitted in a dry tone of voice.

"Doctor Wells and Caitlin had nothing to do with this," Cisco said suddenly. "I built the gun."

"You did?" Barry asked. "Why?"

"Because speed and cold are opposites," Cisco explained. "Temperature is measured by how quickly the atoms of something are oscillating. The faster they are, the hotter it is, and when things are cold, they're slower on the atomic level. When there's no movement at all, it's called-"

"Absolute zero," Barry cut in.

"Yeah," Cisco confirmed. "I designed a compact cryoengine to achieve absolute zero. I built it to stop you. I didn't know who you were then, Barry. I mean, what if you turned out to be some psycho, like Mardon, or Nimbus?"

"But I didn't, did I?" Barry demanded, furious.

"We built the entire structure you're standing in to do good, and it blew up," Caitlin said, leaping to Cisco's defense. "In the wake of that, you can understand why Cisco would want to be prepared for the worst."

"I can understand that," Barry conceded, though he was still angry. "But what I _can't_ understand is why you didn't tell me what you did. I mean, after all we've been through, I thought you trusted me! I thought we were friends!"

"We are, Barry," Cisco insisted.

"I mean, if you had _told_ me, I could have been prepared!" Barry went on, on a roll now. "But instead, Kara could have died tonight!"

"And I have to live with that," Cisco said ashamedly.

"No, Cisco," Barry corrected. "We all do." Shaking his head, he turned and stormed out of the Cortex, needing to be alone for a while. Eventually, he found his way to the treadmill. He switched it on and started running, needing to work out his anger and his fear and his guilt, needing to forget.

"Barry!" He heard Felicity calling him a long time later. "Barry!" He switched the treadmill off and turned to see her standing by the door.

"What are you doing?" he asked. "You should go back to your hotel. Get some sleep."

"You should too," Felicity replied. "Not go back to my hotel, I meant get some sleep."

"I can't," Barry said, shaking his head. "Every time I close my eyes, I see Kara lying dead on the floor of that theater. I watched my sister get hurt less than a foot away from me, and I couldn't stop it. And even though it didn't kill her, for all we know, next time it could. I have to go faster."

"Barry, it's not your fault," Felicity said, and for a moment Barry wondered how many times she had told Oliver something similar. "And it's not Cisco's either." There was a moment of silence and she came over to sit beside him on the edge of the treadmill.

"I know you're upset," she went on, "but you have to look at this from his point of view."

"No, I get it," Barry replied. "He didn't trust me."

"Barry, when you first met us- me, Oliver, and Dig- we were this well-oiled archery machine, but we didn't start out that way," Felicity said. "And unlike you guys, we weren't thrown together overnight. We came together one at a time." There was a long pause, then she added, "Believe me, it took much more than watching Oliver do the salmon ladder to make me trust him." She smiled, apparently unconsciously, and Barry wondered for the second time what exactly was between them.

"I've seen firsthand what this life can do to people," she said, and here her voice turned somber, reminding Barry that Team Arrow had suffered a devastating loss recently. "It's a lonely path. Don't make it any lonelier than it has to be." By this time, she was standing by the door, and then, a moment later, she was gone. Barry shook his head and, not knowing what else to do, followed her out of the room and back to the Cortex.

Later, as he was examining a map of the city filling one of the screens set up around the room, he heard footsteps behind him, and then he heard Cisco announce, "I figured out a way to track Captain Cold."

"You gotta stop naming these guys," Caitlin remarked. Barry didn't turn around.

"Barry," Wells said. "Listen to him." Reluctantly, Barry turned away from the screen to face the people arranged around the room.

"How?" he asked, irritation lacing his voice.

"The cold gun is powered by an engine control unit," Cisco explained. "A microcomputer that regulates air to fuel ratios so the subcooled fluid in the chambers doesn't overflow and-"

"Explode," Felicity put in.

"Right," Cisco confirmed, turning to point in her direction. "This ECU was receiving updates wirelessly from my tablet. If I boost the signal using Central City's network and send a false update, we'll get a ping back."

"And then we'll be able to locate Snart," Wells surmised.

"How long will it take?" Barry asked.

"First I have to hack into the city's network," Cisco said. "So I don't know, thirty minutes, maybe?"

"I can do it in less than one," Felicity said, running over to sit down in front of one of the computers in the Cortex. "When it comes to hacking, I'm the fastest woman alive." She tried to crack her knuckles, winced, and exclaimed "Ow! That was _not_ as badass as I pictured." After a few seconds of frenzied typing, she said, "Alright, I'm in."

"Are you kidding?" Caitlin asked, sounding astonished. Barry was unfazed. He knew there was a reason Oliver had Felicity on his team, and that that reason had nothing to do with whatever emotional connection existed between them.

"Alright," Cisco said in an excited tone of voice. "I'm sending the updates. We're connected."

"Network is transmitting the location," Felicity said.

"We got him," Caitlin added after a moment. "He's heading west on Nelson toward the train station."

"If he's leaving, it appears Mr. Snart may have gotten what he came for," Wells said. In an instant, Barry had his suit on, ready to go after Snart.

"When we put our minds to it, dude, nothing can stop us," Cisco said excitedly. Clenching his jaw, Barry found himself locking eyes with Kara as he angrily switched off his comm.

"Oh," Cisco said in a troubled tone. "You turned your earpiece off. How are we supposed to talk to each other?"

"I don't feel like talking right now," Barry replied irritably.

"At least let me go with you," Kara offered.

"No," Barry said. "I want to do this alone." Then, like a shot, he was off. Before he'd really had time to think about what he was doing, before he'd time to come up with a strategy, he was at the train station, and then he was racing alongside the train he'd seen Snart slip onto. In an instant, he crashed through the window and landed inside the train car, crouched in the aisle directly in front of Snart.

"There's nowhere to run!" he cried.

"You know, I didn't see you before?" Snart replied, seemingly unconcerned. "Does your mom know you're out past your bedtime? And where's your red and blue clad friend?"

"If you wanted to get away, you should have taken something faster than a train," Barry said instead of answering his questions.

"That's if I _wanted _to get away," Snart replied. "I've seen your weakness, at the armored car, then at the theater. See, while you're busy saving everybody, I'll be saving myself." With that, he pointed his gun at the floor of the train and fired. A thin patch of ice spread along the floor, and the train shuddered and groaned as, outside, the wheels froze and an ice formation forced it off the track.

"Good luck with that!" Snart shouted from the door, before leaping out of it and disappearing into the night. Barry hesitated, torn. Snart had to be stopped, but the train was derailing, tipping off of the track, one car at a time, and he had to get all these people out.

Suddenly, with a jolt, the sideways tilting motion of the train stopped. Barry ran to the broken window that he'd entered the train through and looked out it to see Kara, her hands braced against the side of the train, struggling to keep it upright long enough for the passengers to evacuate.

"I've got this!" she shouted in a strained voice. "You go get Snart!" Barry nodded and race off.

Moments later, he found himself facing off against Snart once more. Before he could react, Snart fired his gun at him, the ice cold beam from it knocking him down and pinning him to the ground beneath an ice formation. When Kara appeared a few minutes later, flying out of the darkness of the night toward Snart like a red and blue missile, he did the same to her.

"Pretty good, you two," he said. "But not good enough." A pause, then he added, "Thank you."

"For what?" Barry snarled.

"You forced me to up my game," Snart replied. "Not only with this gun but with how I think about the job. It's been educational." He lifted his cold gun to aim at Barry and Kara, and Barry braced himself for the end.

"Drop it!" Cisco's voice shouted suddenly. Past Snart's shoulder, Barry saw him, Caitlin, and Felicity, carrying a large object glowing with blue-white light between them.

"This is a prototype cold gun," Cisco said when Snart turned his head to look at the three of them. "Four times the size, four times the power."

"I was wondering who you were talking to," Snart remarked to Barry and Kara.

"Hey!" Cisco shouted to draw his attention back toward him. "Unless you want a taste of your own medicine, I'd back the hell up."

"Your hands are shaking," Snart told him. "You've never killed anyone."

"There's a first time for everything, _Captain Cold_," Cisco replied. "I will shoot you." A long, tense silence followed.

"Alright, you win," Snart finally said, putting his hands up in a gesture of surrender. "I'll see you around." With that, he stepped past them and started to walk away, off into the night.

"Hey!" Cisco called after him. "Leave the diamond."

"Don't push your luck," he said, pausing for just a moment before continuing on his way.

"I couldn't shoot him if I wanted to," Cisco said when Snart had gone. "This is the STAR Labs vacuum cleaner." With a laugh, he added, "With a _lot_ of LEDs."

"Let's get you warm," Felicity said in a soft, concerned voice, crouching at Barry's side and resting a hand on his shoulder.

"Don't worry, I've got it," Kara said, and proceeded to defrost first herself and then Barry with her heat vision.

"And before any of you ask," she said when the group turned to stare at her, "no, I don't know why I didn't think of doing that sooner." They all laughed.

"Thank you," Barry said fervently, looking each of them in the eyes in turn, hoping they would see the silent apology in the gesture. They all nodded, and, as a group, they made their way back to STAR Labs.

Later, after weeks of dealing with the metahuman threats that seemed to crop up all the time these days, like mushrooms after a rain, Barry finally managed to find a few quiet moments to himself to reflect on what had gone down with Leonard Snart. He had no idea what his next move might be, and the team's attempts to track him had come up unfortunately rather short. But one thing was certain- he had, however inadvertently, taught Barry a valuable lesson about trusting his team.


	17. Flash vs Arrow

Kara was having a work from home day- curled up under a blanket on her couch, dressed in her softest, most comfortable pajamas, her notes and the relevant documents for the article she was currently working on spread out on the coffee table in front of her while she typed away at her laptop, compiling them into a concise, readable story, pausing occasionally to take a sip from the mug of coffee set on the couch cushion beside her- when her phone, which was balanced on the arm of the couch, lit up with a text message. She reached over to look at it and saw that the text was from Barry, asking her to meet him at Jitters. She sighed. She didn't mind meeting up with him- she rather enjoyed the prospect, in fact- but it meant that she'd have to put on real clothes. Since she wasn't going to the office, she decided to forgo her more formal attire, opting instead for jeans with holes worn in their knees, a comfortably oversized t-shirt, sneakers, and of course her mother's necklace, which she never took off.

Kara arrived at Jitters before Barry. She glanced around to make sure that he was in fact not there yet and she hadn't just missed him, then put in her coffee order with Iris, who was manning the counter, and found a good spot to settle in and wait for him. Shortly after she'd done so, in came Felicity, accompanied by Oliver Queen, who Kara had never seen in person before. Just as Kara herself had done a few minutes before, they put in their coffee order with Iris and took a seat at the table in front of hers, the one nearest to the door. Neither of them spoke to each other. They seemed to be waiting for something- or someone- though, thanks to her tendency to people watch when she was out in public by herself, Kara couldn't help but notice that while Oliver was watching the door, Felicity was watching him.

A few minutes later, Barry walked through the door, making it suddenly clear who Oliver and Felicity were waiting for. Evidently, Kara wasn't the only person meeting him here today.

"The bad guy that you're after," Kara heard Oliver say when Barry approached the table where he was sitting, "the one who robbed the bank, his name is Roy G. Bivolo."

"Thanks," Barry replied. "How did you find that out?" Oliver didn't answer.

"The guy's still alive, right?" Barry asked, concern in his voice. Oliver just looked at him, and Kara thought of how odd that question would have seemed if she hadn't already figured out on her own that Oliver Queen and the Arrow were one and the same.

"I'm just asking," Barry muttered defensively, shifting uncomfortably under Oliver's glare. "I thought you didn't want to help."

"I'm not," Oliver said, shaking his head. "It's just a name."

"Alright," Barry replied, apparently seeing the wisdom of not pursuing an argument about it.

At that moment, Kara was distracted by Iris bringing her her usual- a caramel macchiato with an extra shot of espresso and a sticky bun- and she stopped listening to the conversation going on at the next table. The next thing she knew, Barry and Iris were passing by her table, in mid conversation.

"- and his arms are like twice the size of yours," Iris was saying as they drew near, making the requisite gesture to demonstrate, and then they were past and Kara didn't hear the rest of their conversation. When she sensed it was over, she beckoned Barry over to her table.

"Hey," he said when he reached it. "I see you got my text." Instead of answering, Kara reached over and punched him in the shoulder. Hard.

"Ow!" Barry exclaimed. "Why do people keep hitting me today?"

"When were you going to tell me that you went after a bad guy by yourself?" Kara demanded.

"Wait, you _heard _that?" Barry asked, glancing over at the next table, where Oliver and Felicity were discussing something in low voices. "_How_?" Kara just looked at him.

"Super hearing," he said, tapping the top of his ear. "Right."  
"Barry, the whole _point_ of me joining your hero crusade was so that you wouldn't go running off after bad guys yourself," Kara said irritably.

"It's just a bank robber," Barry insisted, omitting- deliberately or not- the fact that said bank robber was apparently a metahuman. "I can handle it." Kara saw him glance surreptitiously toward Oliver, whether because he was wondering how the fact that he hadn't been able to convince him to help was going to affect things or because he didn't know that she knew he was the Arrow, she didn't know.

"Promise me you'll call me if you even _think _you might be getting in over your head," she said.

"I won't get in over my-" Barry started to protest.

"_Barry_," Kara interjected sharply. "_Promise me_."

"Alright, I promise," Barry said. "Happy?" Kara opened her mouth to reply, but she was interrupted by Oliver coming over to their table suddenly and saying, "Okay."

"Okay what?" Barry asked, bewildered.

"Okay, we'll help you catch your bad guy," Oliver replied. He sounded reluctant, and Kara wondered if Felicity had had anything to do with his sudden change of heart.

"Great," Barry said, brightening. "Metahuman."

"I'm not calling him that, Barry," Oliver said.

"Partners?" Barry asked, holding out his hand.

"Partners," Oliver agreed. They shook hands, and Kara couldn't help but wonder exactly how well this new partnership was going to work out in the long run.

Later that day, when Kara had long since returned home and to work, she got a text from Cisco.

_We need you at STAR Labs_, it read. Kara got the sinking feeling that Barry hadn't kept his promise, and she raced to STAR Labs as fast as she could, which, while not as fast as Barry, was still plenty fast.

Felicity was on the phone when Kara entered the Cortex.

"That was the Arrow," she said, hanging up. "He says that Barry is acting strangely."

"Strangely how?" Wells asked.

"He's been whammied," Joe's voice answered, and they all turned to see him in the doorway. "He was acting angry. It was scary. And his eyes, they glowed."

"It's possible that his body is fighting off the effects so it's hitting him slower," Caitlin spoke up.

"When it comes to rage, that is not a good thing," Wells said gravely. "The longer you suppress your emotions-"

"The bigger the explosion," Felicity cut in.

"Considering what he can do, how do we even stop him?" Joe asked.

"A cold gun would come in _real_ handy right about now," Cisco muttered.

"Hey!" Joe exclaimed.

"I'm just saying," Cisco said defensively. Joe turned to Kara, asking her a silent question.

"I can't stop him," she said, feeling her stomach twist with fear at the thought. "He's too fast, and I'd be too afraid of hurting him."

"None of us can stop Barry," Wells put in. "Fortunately, Felicity knows someone who can." Turning to her, he said, "I think you'd better call back Oliver Queen. We're gonna need the Arrow's help." Everyone in the room- excepting Kara, who already knew- turned to stare at her, and Kara couldn't help but feel for her in that moment, because she looked utterly terrified. She pulled out her phone and started frantically texting, and about twenty minutes later a man who introduced himself as John Diggle- or Dig, if they preferred- arrived at STAR Labs. His reason for being there was quickly explained- he, like Felicity, was involved in Oliver's crusade, and her instinctive reaction to having Oliver so suddenly and unexpectedly outed was to insist that they close ranks.

"Oooh, see, I knew the Arrow was Oliver Queen," Cisco told him excitedly. "I mean, I had it narrowed down to a list of like 150 people, but he was _definitely_ on that list."

"Do you have a way to stop Barry's rage fest?" Dig asked, turning to Wells. He sounded fearful, and Kara realized that, for all his projected confidence, he was worried that Barry might hurt Oliver.

"I have an idea of how to do that," Wells replied, surprisingly calmly given the situation. "Joe, I'm gonna need your help."

"We need to _find_ him first," Joe said. "Before he hurts somebody."

"I have him," Felicity spoke up from where she was sitting alone in front of one of the monitors. "Facial recognition picked him up on a traffic camera downtown." She watched whatever it was from the camera feed that was on the monitor in silence for a moment, and muttered, "Oh God." She sounded horrified, and Kara moved to stand behind her, watching the monitor over her shoulder. On it, she could see Barry throwing Eddie around on the pavement while Iris- soundlessly, since the camera feed didn't have audio- pleaded with him to stop.

The sound of retreating footsteps made Kara glance back for a moment, in time to see Wells and Joe on their way out. She only hoped that whatever it was they were planning on doing to stop this, they did it fast.

"I just hope they can change Barry back before he _kills_ Oliver," Caitlin said when they had gone.

"Me, I'd be more worried about what Oliver might have to do to Barry," Dig replied with more of that false confidence. It took Kara a moment to realize that they were watching the same footage that she and Felicity were on the bank of monitors on the table in front of them.

"Barry has superpowers, Oliver has a bow and arrow," Caitlin said skeptically.

"Do you have any idea how many people Oliver has killed with that bow and arrow?" Dig asked, turning to her.

"Recurve bow arrows can travel up to 300 feet per second, so like 200 miles per hour," Cisco put in. "Barry can run _three times_ that fast."

"Whatever," Dig said stubbornly. "Oliver's been doing this a lot longer. My money's on experience."

"My money's on speed," Cisco shot back.

"Please tell me you're not _actually _having this conversation right now," Felicity said in a horrified tone of voice. Kara was inclined to agree with her. Oliver and Barry were _fighting each other_, and they were taking bets on which one of them would win. Clearly, their priorities were skewed. Felicity's words seemed to have cowed them, however, as after that they didn't speak again, and they all watched the tableau unfolding before them in silence.

"Oliver, get up!" Felicity cried suddenly as Oliver was knocked to the ground by an invisible flurry of blows from the red blur that was Barry, leaning forward toward the monitor as if she intended to throw herself through it to where Oliver was. Kara couldn't tell if Oliver had his comm on or if Felicity had just been making a plea to the universe hoping that somehow he would hear it. She fidgeted worriedly with her necklace as she watched him struggle to his feet, and Kara realized something- whatever was between them was more than just partnership, more than even just friendship. She was obviously- to Kara, at least- in love with him, but she hadn't seen the two of them together enough to know if the feeling was mutual. Not that it mattered right now. There were much more important things regarding Oliver to worry about right now, namely whether or not Wells and Joe would be able to reverse the effects of Bivolo's powers on Barry before the latter wound up seriously injuring the former. To that end, Kara returned her attention to the camera footage on the monitor, up until the point where it became clear, from what little was in the camera's view, that Wells and Joe had arrived and fixed Barry and the fight was over.

Later, after Barry and Oliver had brought Bivolo to STAR Labs and locked him up in the pipeline, and Team Arrow was on their way back home to Starling City, Kara confronted Barry about what had gone down.

"You promised you'd call me if you got in over your head," she reminded him. "You didn't keep that promise."

"I know," Barry said, sounding utterly uncontrite about it. "But everything turned out fine. We got the bad guy. And I didn't need your help. I had Oliver."

"Oliver didn't even _want_ to help," Kara pointed out. "He only did it because Felicity made him." This last was conjecture, but she suspected no less true for being that.

"He really can't say no to her, can he?" Barry said with an amused smile.

"And there's no guarantee that he'll be there to help you next time," Kara went on as if he hadn't spoken. "Just… don't go after bad guys without me anymore, okay?"

"Okay," Barry replied.

"Good," Kara said. "Because I don't ever want to go through something like this ever again."


	18. Old Enemies Return

Barry surveyed the crime scene in front of him, studying it with a practiced eye. What he saw disturbed him.

"Hey," Joe said, walking over to him, and he acknowledged him with a short nod. "What are you thinking?"

"Look at the splatter patterns and the trajectory of the remains," he replied, pointing toward the relevant details. "Only a high speed collision could have done this. But to cause this type of damage to a human in this space? Whatever hit them would have to have been moving fast." _As fast as me_, he thought but didn't say, though it was clear that Joe must have been thinking it too, because the mood between them was suddenly tinged with fear.

"Get this," Eddie said, and they both turned toward him. "The witness says all he saw was a blur. Sound familiar?" He grinned triumphantly, and Barry resisted the urge to roll his eyes. He'd been doggedly on his "the Flash is a menace who needs to be stopped" course ever since the incident last week where Barry had attacked him while under the influence of Bivolo's powers. Nevermind the fact that Eddie didn't know who the Flash was under the scarlet cowl, it was still irritating and quite frankly a little hurtful that he thought Barry could ever do something like _this_. Whoever was responsible for this had murdered innocent people in cold blood, the very same kind of brutality that Oliver was so often accused of by people who didn't have all the facts. Considering the situation, Barry wasn't sure he liked that association.

"You saw a blur?" he asked the witness, approaching him after exchanging glances with Joe. "What was it?"

"Whatever it was, it was looking for something," the witness- some kind of doctor or scientist, judging by his white lab coat- replied.

"Well, what did it look like?" Barry asked.

"Like a-a man," the witness stammered in reply. "In some kind of yellow suit."

"Okay," Barry said, nodding, and immediately pulled Joe aside, out of earshot of both the witness and Eddie.

"Barry, listen-" Joe started to say.

"I need to check my files," Barry interjected in a rush, knowing that he sounded panicked but finding that he didn't care. "You heard him, right? The man in yellow is back."

"I know," Joe replied grimly. "He's been in town for a few weeks now. He paid me a visit at home. He took all the evidence you had gathered that proved his existence. The files are gone."

"Why didn't you tell me this sooner?" Barry asked.

"I couldn't," Joe replied.

"Why not?" Barry demanded.

"Because he threatened to kill Iris," Joe said, and Barry was instantly silenced, his anger fading. Joe would do anything to keep Iris safe. He knew that. He _understood_ that, because he would too.

"Okay," he said. "Let's figure out what he was looking for, and why he wanted it badly enough to kill for it." Joe nodded, and off they went.

Eventually, the trail led them to a prototype that Mercury Labs had been developing that utilized tachyons, superluminal particles that, according to Wells, if harnessed would allow a person or object to move faster than light. After an unsuccessful attempt to convince the head of Mercury Labs, Doctor Tina Mcgee, to let them use the tachyon prototype as bait to trap the man in yellow, Barry retreated to his lab to think everything over.

His brooding session was suddenly interrupted when he glanced out the window and saw the man in yellow standing on the roof of a nearby building. As if he sensed Barry's eyes on him, he suddenly raced down the side of the building in a blur of red lighting. Without thinking, Barry gave chase.

"It was you!" he shouted when he finally managed to catch up to the man in yellow. "You were the one in my house that night! You tried to kill me! Why?!"

"If you want to know that, you're gonna have to catch me, the man in yellow taunted, distorting his voice to disguise it the same way that Barry himself did. Then he was off again, and Barry was chasing after him.

"Not fast enough, Flash," the man in yellow taunted when Barry found himself facing him down across a football field. What followed was a fight wherein Barry was unable to lay even so much as a finger on the man in yellow. The next thing he knew, he was lying flat on his stomach, his face an inch away from the artificial turf of the football field, the man in yellow's foot on the middle of his back, pinning him to the ground.

"It's you destiny to lose to me, Flash," he said cryptically, and then he was gone.

Barry's recounting of the event was enough to convince Joe and Wells to redouble their efforts to obtain the tachyon prototype, and before long Barry found himself standing before the trap the team had built for the man in the yellow, accompanied by Joe, Wells, a half dozen uniformed officers, and, unfortunately, Eddie, though thankfully he and the uniformed officers were in the Cortex with Cisco, monitoring everything from a distance. Despite Wells' reassurances that the trap would hold, that it would keep the man in yellow contained despite how fast he was because force fields were impervious to speed, Barry couldn't shake the feeling that something was going to go horribly wrong. Even Kara's presence at his side didn't reassure him- super strength and impenetrable skin wouldn't do her any good against an enemy so fast that she couldn't see him coming. For the first time since she had come into his life, Barry found himself fearing for his sister's safety.

Suddenly, in a flash of red lightning, the man in yellow appeared inside the trap. He had taken the bait.

"Now that we have you, let's get some answers," Wells said, addressing the man inside the trap.

"Doctor Wells," the man in yellow said. "We meet at last."

"What do you want with the tachyonic particles?" Wells asked, cutting right to the point.

"My goals are beyond your understanding," the man in yellow replied in his distorted voice.

"I don't know, I'm a pretty smart guy," Wells said. "I knew that you were exceptionally fast, so any trap we manufactured would have to be invisible. I knew your cells could repair themselves at extraordinary speeds, so you can withstand the damage this is doing to your body right now. I knew all of this because your powers are almost exactly like those of the Flash."

"Oh, I'm not like the Flash at all," the man in yellow replied. "You might say I'm the reverse." That was when everything went wrong. There was a sudden fluctuation in the containment field, and in the moment before it went away, the man in yellow had Wells inside the trap with him and was beating him senseless. Then Eddie and the uniformed officers came charging into the room while Joe shouted at Cisco to shut off the trap. When he didn't, he smashed its power source and it flickered out and the man in yellow was free of the trap, murdering the officers who tried to stop him despite Kara's attempt at intervention, for some reason sparing Eddie before racing out of the building. Barry chased after him, determined not to let him get away, finding himself in the parking lot, where he quickly ended up in the same situation he'd been in only days before. This time, what saved him were fireballs that came plummeting out of the sky to strike the man in yellow, knocking him away from Barry. He looked up to see who had saved him, and saw a man he didn't recognize, his head wreathed in flames, more of them shooting from his hands and feet, keeping him in the air. In the next instant, he was gone.

"Our race is not yet done," the man in yellow said when he recovered his footing. "See you soon, Flash." Then he too was gone. In the immediate aftermath of the night's events, Barry realized that there was nothing he could do until the man in yellow- the Reverse Flash, he decided to call him, based on his comments to Wells- reappeared as he promised he would. But in the meantime, he could train and get faster so that he could be better prepared for when that day came. And once Wells had recovered from his injuries, Barry set to work on doing just that.

But his troubles with old enemies were far from over, however. About a month after he'd begun his training to prepare to face the Reverse Flash once more, Central City was struck by a strange robbery that, according to the evidence, had obviously been perpetrated by Leonard Snart. What made it strange was that despite it having every appearance of being a robbery, nothing had been taken. It wasn't like Leonard Snart to not finish a job, so something must have been up. It didn't take Barry long to figure out Snart's game- he was testing him, learning his reactions, his methods, his response times, just as he had done with the police. The moment this realization came to him, he went to STAR Labs to relate the information to the team.

"If Snart wants a fight with the Flash, let's give him one," he said once they had discussed at length what the man in question's endgame might be.

"Well," Wells started to say.

"You don't think I should?" Barry asked.

"I didn't say that," Wells replied. "But, Barry, as fast as you are, you cannot be everywhere at once, and it becomes then a question of priorities. Now, in the last month you have made a commitment to increasing your speed, enhancing your reflexes, and it's working. You're finally getting faster."

"Okay, but what am I supposed to do, just ignore Snart?" Barry asked.

"You don't have to," Kara put in. "There's two of us. You can keep your focus on your training, and I can go after Snart."

"The last time the two of you had a fight with Snart, a train derailed," Wells cautioned. "You were lucky to get all those people to safety. That was with both of you working together, Kara, and I don't like your chances going after him by yourself. Besides, if you don't give him the fight he wants, he may just back off, and then there'll be no casualties." Kara shook her head.

"I can handle him," she insisted. "And Barry's right. We can't just let him run rampant all over the city."

"I am simply trying to ensure that you are cognizant of the risks involved," Wells said evenly. "However, as I believe that the Reverse Flash poses a greater threat, to Barry and us all, I am grateful that you are so willing to take on Snart so that Barry can focus on his training." Kara accepted his thanks with a wordless nod.

"Okay," she said. "Call me when you have something." They all agreed that they would, and off she went. When she was gone, Wells looked to Barry, a silent question in his normally inscrutable expression.

"I have to get to work," Barry said in answer. "I need to let Joe know what we've decided. But as soon as that's done, I'll meet you guys at Ferris Air for more training, I promise." Wells nodded, satisfied, and Barry went on his way.

At the precinct, he informed Joe of his intention to keep his focus on his training, as he had told Wells he would, and let him know that Kara and the team would be the ones to help him and the police with Snart. Joe seemed suspicious of the reasoning behind his decision, but accepted it without comment.

Later that night, after Barry had exhausted himself with his training and was ready to drop, he heard that Snart had perpetuated another robbery, one where he had actually stolen something, and that the attempt by the CCPD to bring him in had gone catastrophically wrong when it turned out that Snart had a partner who was armed with a portable handheld flamethrower against which their specialized cold resistant ballistic shields had been useless. Kara reported with evident frustration that she hadn't arrived in time to stop Snart and his new partner from making off with their ill gotten gains.

"Hey, it's okay," Barry soothed, laying a hand on his sister's shoulder, realizing in that moment what a massive error in judgement he'd made ignoring Snart in favor of his training. "We'll go after Snart together from now on. The next time he and his pyro pal show up, we'll make them sorry they ever messed with us." Kara nodded, a hard look of fierce determination alighting in her eyes.

They got their chance sooner than they thought. The next day, Snart and his new partner, who they'd recently identified as Mick Rory, an infamous arsonist, appeared on the local news, the broadcast of which they had obviously hacked somehow, and it could be clearly seen that they were holding Caitlin hostage.

"Porter and Main, tonight, sundown," Snart said, wrapping up his speech about the existence of the Flash, the close camera angle making look bug-eyed. "Come out, come out, wherever you are, Flash. Show the whole world you're real, or this woman dies."

"No, don't come for me!" Caitlin cried. "Stay away!" Then the broadcast cut out. Barry and Kara exchanged looks. They knew what they had to do. They went to Porter and Main at the appointed time, breaking straight through the police cordon set up there.

"The Scarlet Speedster!" Snart called out when he saw them, marching toward them with Rory at his side. "And his red and blue friend! Any preferences on how you'd like to die? The flame or the frost?" When Barry and Kara marched toward him without answering, he said, "Not in the mood for chitchat. Gotcha. Ready when you are!" Barry and Kara picked up their pace until they were charging toward him and Rory, and they spent the next few minutes locked in pitched battle.

"Guys!" Cisco suddenly shouted in their comms. "Their weapons should cancel each other out, but you have to get them to cross streams!"

"Like in Ghostbusters?!" Kara shouted back.

"That movie is surprisingly scientifically accurate," Cisco muttered in reply. Barry looked to his sister and nodded, a silent signal. _You go left, I'll go right_. They took a moment to get , Snart and Rory to set their sights on one of them each- Snart on Barry and Rory on Kara- then they acted as they'd wordlessly agreed, Barry darting to the right in the same moment that Kara swooped left, and the beams that had just been fired from Snart and Rory's weapons met in the middle, creating a shockwave that traveled backwards toward the beams' points of origin and knocked Snart and Rory to the ground.

"Hahaha," Snart chuckled breathlessly from where he lay. "I didn't see that coming. I guess you win this time."

"There won't be a next time," Barry said, and stepped back to let the police arrest him and Rory. Then he and Kara, after confirming that Caitlin had been safely rescued from where she'd been held hostage, headed for home, both exhausted from the day's events, though Barry suspected himself of being more so than Kara.

Despite what he had told Snart, Barry couldn't shake the feeling that they hadn't seen the last of him. And sure enough, a few days later he found out that Snart and Rory had never made it to Iron Heights, that someone had broken them free during their transfer. The next time they showed their faces in Central City, though, Barry knew, he would be much better prepared to face them.


	19. Sound and Fury

Kara paused in her work for a moment, leaning back away from her desk to lose herself in the familiar clamour of the bullpen- phones ringing, keyboards clattering, shoes clicking against the linoleum floor, people chatting with one another in low voices, all of the dozens of sounds that accompanied each cog in an information machine moving and working in tandem. Kara smiled, remembering, not for the first time, how lucky she was to be a part of this. She was just about to return to her work when the sound of someone clearing their throat cut through the background noise of the bullpen and into her musings. She turned her chair in the direction of the sound and was surprised to see Caitlin standing next to her desk.

"Caitlin," she said, her surprise creeping into her voice. "Am I needed at STAR Labs?" Even as she asked the question, she knew that she shouldn't have had to- Barry would have called or at the very least texted her if that had been the case. All the same, Caitlin shook her head in answer to it.

"No," she said. "I'm here because I need to tell you something. Is there someplace private that we can talk?"

"Yeah," Kara replied. "Follow me." Getting up from her desk, she led Caitlin to the file room, which hadn't seen much use since they'd started storing their and archives digitally.

"So what's up?" she asked once the door was closed behind them, turning to face Caitlin. "What is it that you need to tell me?" Caitlin hesitated for a minute, seeming unsure of herself.

"The pyrokinetic metahuman who saved Barry from the Reverse Flash," she finally said. "I saw his face."

"And?" Kara prompted.

"It's Ronnie," Caitlin said breathlessly, her eyes shining.

"Caitlin, that's impossible," Kara replied, shaking her head. "Ronnie's dead."

"He's alive," Caitlin insisted. "I know what I saw." Kara took a moment to mull that over. As impossible as what Caitlin was saying seemed, Kara knew that she was smart enough not to let her mind or her eyes play tricks on her and make her think she saw things that she didn't see. If she believed that Ronnie was alive, it was more than likely true.

"All right, say he _is_ alive," she said. "Why did you need to bring this information to me, specifically?"

"Because I need to find out what happened to him," Caitlin explained, "how he became what he is now, and I'm not much of a detective."

"And you think _I _am?" Kara asked incredulously.

"You're an investigative reporter," Caitlin pointed out. "It's literally in your job description." Kara felt her mouth twist into a wry grin in acknowledgement of the truth of Caitlin's words. As much as she wanted to, there could be no refuting _that_ statement.

"All right," she said. "I'll help you. However I can."

"Thank you," Caitlin replied. "Thank you so much." She pulled Kara into a hug that she was too startled by to pull away from.

"Don't mention it," she mumbled when Caitlin released her a moment later. "What are friends for?" Their investigation proved to be short lived, however- they had only just gotten into it when they discovered that, whatever had happened to Ronnie and whatever had caused it, the Army was covering it up. To complicate matters even more, whatever information they had, they were going to great lengths to keep hidden from the public eye, burying it beneath firewalls and encryption so intense that it made Kara wish that Felicity was apart of their team instead of Oliver's, because she was exactly the person they needed to overcome the obstacles currently standing in their way.

"We can always call her," Caitlin suggested when Kara brought it up. "She may be able to make the trip here and help us break through all of this."

"But what if she's too busy?" Kara countered. "I mean, we have no idea what's going on over in Starling City. She might have too much on her plate right now to come and help us."

"She could always do it remotely, from Starling City," Cailtin replied. "She doesn't necessarily have to physically be here in order to help."

"Hmmm," Kara said thoughtfully. "Maybe. Still, I don't know. It seems like a bit of a long shot." She turned the problem over and over in her mind in silence for another few minutes before she said, "Tell you what- why don't we split up for a bit and regroup once we've figured out the best way to tackle this obstacle? That way we have a backup plan." Caitlin nodded in agreement.

"Sounds good to me," she said. Kara nodded once in acknowledgment, and they went their separate ways.

Shortly afterward, before she'd really had a chance to think on the problem, Kara found herself being called to Doctor Wells' home, as he'd apparently been attacked there the night before. She arrived there at the same time as Cisco and Caitlin, and followed them inside.

"Hey, what took you guys so long?" Barry asked, approaching them after Caitlin had confirmed that Doctor Wells was okay and the latter had gone off to make hotel reservations.

"We… got lost," Cisco said, glancing over at Caitlin.

"We've never been here before," Caitlin told Barry.

"Really?" he asked. "Never?" All three of them nodded. Kara supposed it was more shocking that Cisco and Caitlin had never been here than that she hadn't, but she felt compelled to nod along anyway.

"He tends to keep his private life private," Caitlin explained.

"What about you?" Barry asked, turning to Kara. She shrugged.

"It took me a while to find this place," she said. "But it's pure coincidence that I arrived here at the same time as these two." She jerked her head towards Cisco and Caitlin.

"Uh-huh," Barry mumbled, then went to continue his work investigating the crime scene.

"Hartley Rathaway possess one of the finest scientific minds I've ever encountered," Wells told the group assembled in the Cortex some time later, after Barry had passed along the information that Wells had named the person he was now speaking of as the culprit behind the vandalism of his home.

"Any ties to Rathaway Industries?" Joe asked, thinking, as usual, like a police detective.

"His grandfather founded the company, his father expanded it, and Hartley was set to inherit the throne," Wells said in answer to the question.

"What happened?" Barry asked.

"He came out to his parents," Caitlin replied. "Old money, old values."

"They were estranged when we met," Wells said. "But… he was brilliant. I couldn't have built the particle accelerator without him."

"You guys have never even mentioned his name," Barry said, clearly bewildered.

"That's because Hartley had a… challenging personality," Caitlin explained.

"What she means is that he was mostly a jerk, but, sometimes, he could be a dick," Cisco put in. Joe chuckled in spite of himself at those words, and Barry grinned.

"Let's just say that Hartley, like many outliers, had trouble relating to his peers," Wells said, restoring decorum to the discussion.

"Yes, but he was always your favorite," Caitlin pointed out.

"The chosen one," Cisco remarked bitterly. When Wells gave him a look, he said, "He referred to himself like that."  
"So, if you two were so close, why would he target you?" Joe asked, clearly still on an investigative track.

"Hartley left STAR Labs about a year ago after we had a… disagreement," Wells said evasively.

"About what?" Joe asked, clearly noticing, as Kara had, Wells' hesitance. There was a long silence, but Wells didn't answer the question.

"Look, don't worry," Barry spoke up suddenly. "We'll stop him. I won't let him hurt you." He locked eyes with each of them in turn as he added, "Any of you." Turning to Joe, he said, "Let's get back to my lab, alright?" Joe nodded and followed him out of the Cortex.

"I could have gone my whole life without seeing that jerk again," Cisco muttered after they had gone. Kara was definitely getting the impression that Hartley Rathaway was not a likeable man. She realized, however, that there really wasn't anything for her to do until they got some sort of lead on him or he struck again. With that in mind, she headed out of the Cortex herself, headed for the Sentinel and back to work.

She hadn't been there for very long when she got a call from Barry- Hartley Rathaway was attacking his family's company. She sighed in resignation to the fact that she wasn't going to get much work done today and rushed to answer Barry's call, changing into her suit on the way. She arrived to find Hartley, apparently pointlessly, smashing windows with sonic blasts he fired from his hands and using those same blasts to push back the cop cars that tried to get near him.

"Get on the ground!" one of the cops shouted through a megaphone as Kara hovered over the scene, waiting for an opening. Hartley fired a sonic blast at him, sending him flying. In the next instant, the scarlet blur that Kara knew to be her brother came racing onto the scene, resolving itself into the person in question and shoving Hartley to the ground.

"It's over, Rathaway," Barry declared, standing over him.

"You know my name," Hartley replied, sounding pleasantly surprised. "I know some names too- Caitlin Snow, Cisco Ramon, and Harrison Wells." In response to Barry's shocked look, he elaborated, "I can hear the radio waves emanating off your suit, about 1900 megahertz. Is that them on the other end, listening? Are they going to _hear_ you die?"

"No," Barry replied with a smile. "They're going to hear you get your ass kicked." Recognizing that as a single, Kara dove toward Hartley, her cape fluttering in the wind, acting as a drag chute to slow her descent enough to control it and slam directly into Hartley, knocking him sideways. He was on his feet in an instant, whirling around to fire sonic blasts at her. She managed to dodge most of them, but one struck her, and suddenly she couldn't move. She dropped to the ground, her knees striking the pavement so hard that it cracked, paralyzed by razor sharp needles of pain lancing through her head and stabbing her eardrums. She cried out, but even that was muffled by the ringing in her ears. She realized that her enhanced hearing must have been amplifying the effects of Hartley's attack, making them much worse than they would have otherwise been.

"Kara!" she heard Barry shout, but his voice sounded muffled and distorted, as if she were hearing it from underwater. A moment later, she felt hands on her shoulders, and then Barry was in front of her, worry alight in his eyes.

"You need to get out of here," he said. "I'll handle Rathaway."

"No," Kara replied, shaking her head. "I can't. I have to help." Her voice sounded pained, even to her own, admittedly not entirely working, ears, but there was nothing she could do about it.

"Go!" Barry shouted, shoving her backwards. "I've got this. Go!" Realizing that there would be no arguing with him about this, Kara went.

She lost track of how much time she spent alone in the medbay, recovering from the damage Hartley's attack had done to her and feeling guilt eating away at her for her failure to be able to help Barry, while the rest of the team dealt with Hartley's arrival and presence at STAR Labs. Consequently, she did not know how long it had taken or what had transpired during the process, and she could only react with surprise and confusion when everyone filed one by one into the med bay, Barry first, followed by Caitlin and Cisco, and lastly Wells, bringing up the rear.

"I assume you were all listening," he said, addressing the other three, besides Kara. She realized that something must have transpired between Wells and Hartley, something that the other three must have been in the Cortex listening in on. "Well, Hartley was telling the truth. I have not been honest with you. With any of you." There was a long, heavy silence before he spoke again.

"The accelerator," he finally said. "Hartley warned me that there was a chance that the accelerator could explode. His data did not show one hundred percent certainty, just that there was a risk, but it was a very real risk. And yet I made the decision that the reward, that everything we could learn and everything we could achieve, that all of that simply outweighed that risk. I'm sorry."

"The next time you choose to put our lives and the lives of the people we love at risk, I expect a heads up," Caitlin said angrily, and stormed out of the room. Cisco didn't say anything, just gave Wells a long look, before he followed after her.

"After the explosion, when everyone else left you, Cisco and Caitlin stood by you," Barry spoke up. "You owe them more than an apology."

"They might soon get more than that, what with Hartley so intent on sending me to the next world," Wells remarked emotionlessly.

"That wouldn't make it right with them," Barry replied. "You broke their trust. _Our_ trust." With that, he too left the med bay.

"I notice that you're still here," Wells said, turning to Kara.

"Only because I can't move while my equilibrium is still messed up," Kara replied. "And I don't heal as fast as Barry, so I'm going to be stuck here for a while. But he's right, and you know it."

"I do," Wells said quietly, and then he left, leaving Kara alone once more.

Some time later, she heard alarm sirens ringing through the building. Something was wrong. She jumped down from the bed in which she was lying, but the moment her feet touched the floor, her head swam, and she fell to her knees.

"Damn it," she muttered, managing with no small amount of difficulty to get back into the bed. Whatever was happening, there was no way she was going to be able to help.

Later, after Cisco joined her in the med bay, recovering from a concussion, Kara learned what had happened- Hartley had allowed himself to be captured in order to gain access to STAR Labs, and then he'd escaped, and now Wells had gone off somewhere as well, after making some cryptic statement about earning back their trust.

"God, what a mess," Kara groaned, slumping back against her pillows. Everyone nodded in agreement. After that, they broke off, leaving Kara alone for the third time that day, to find a solution to the Hartley problem. Shortly afterward, there was a loud screeching noise that echoed through the building, and Hartley Rathaway's voice boomed out over the intercomm system.

"Nice gambit, Harrison," he said. "But this isn't over." There was a pause while he listened to Wells' response, then he said, "The city already hated you. You don't think I noticed that press conference was a pathetic bishop's sacrifice? No, no, no, I've played with you too many times to let you get away with that. This is between you, me, and the Flash." Kara felt a lightning bolt of fear jolt through her.

"Actually, I really do," Hartley continued after another pause for Wells' response. "What do you say? One last game of chess?" A third pause, then, "You're right, and I'm already at the board. So why don't you move your precious scarlet knight while I take out a few pawns?" There a second loud shriek, and then silence. Kara felt her fear turn to ice in her gut. She knew what was about to happen- Barry was about to go charging into danger, just as he always did, but this time without her there to help him. There was nothing she could do but wait and pray that he would make it back alive.

After what seemed like an eternity but was probably no more than an hour or so, Kara's prayers were answered. Barry returned to STAR Labs with Hartley in tow once more, injured and temporarily deafened but thankfully very much alive. As the team went about the process of locking Hartley back up in the pipeline and making sure that this time he wouldn't be able to escape, Kara vowed to herself that she would do anything in her power to make sure that something like this never happened again. She never again wanted to be out of commission while Barry had to face danger on his own.


	20. The Answer to the Mystery

Barry and Kara returned to STAR Labs with their latest conquered foe- a teleporting metahuman named Shawna Baez, christened Peekaboo by Caitlin- in tow, both of them flushed with victory. No sooner had they placed Peekaboo in her cell in the pipeline, however, than they realized that something was wrong. It was quiet- too quiet. A deep, tomblike silence hung over everything, like the calm before the storm. A quick search of the building revealed that Hartley's cell in the pipeline was empty and Cisco was gone, neither in the Cortex where they had left him nor anywhere else in the building. Barry exchanged a troubled look with Kara, both of them coming to the realization, in the exact same moment, that something must have happened involving those two.

"You said you knew what happened to Ronnie and how he was still alive," Cisco said in the security footage from the pipeline they were watching on a monitor in the Cortex a few minutes later. "And you said Professor Stein was at STAR Labs the night of the explosion."

"Yes," Hartley replied.

"Why?" Cisco asked.

"The mystery isn't why Stein went to STAR Labs that night," Hartley said, in the smug mocking tone that was quickly becoming familiar to Barry. "It's why he didn't leave."

"Tell me," Cisco said, in as close to a demanding tone as he could manage- he wasn't particularly intimidating.

"Can't," Hartley replied, still in that mocking tone. "Have to show you."

"You are not getting out of this cell," Cisco insisted.

"Fair enough, but I know you, Cisco," Hartley replied, sounding unconvinced. "I know how much you looked up to Ronnie. He was like family, a family you built yourself here. I know how much you want to see that family healed. Let me help you."

"I don't believe you," Cisco said, almost angrily, as if he were wondering how Hartley could dare use his emotions against him to taunt him this way.

"Well, I'm telling you the truth, Cisco," Hartley replied. "When you're ready, you know where to find me." After that, Ciso walked out of frame, and Hartley retreated to one corner of his cell to sit in contemplative silence. Barry exchanged another grim look with his sister. That would seem to have been the end of it, but Hartley's empty cell and Cisco's absence would also seem to suggest otherwise. Chewing worriedly on his bottom lip, Barry reached for the nearest keyboard and hit a key on it a few times to advance the security footage forward, one frame at a time. He stopped and let it play when Cisco reentered the frame. He slipped a pair of power dampening cuffs through the slot that Hartley was given his meals through and waited for Hartley to take him.

"I didn't know you enjoyed yourself a bit of rough play," he said with a teasing smirk as he put the cuffs on.

"If I'm gonna let you out, I'm not taking any chances," Cisco replied.

"Curiousity's a maddening thing, is it not?" Hartley asked. Cisco didn't answer, or perhaps he was deliberately ignoring him, keeping his attention on opening the door of his cell. A minute later, they were gone, disappearing from the pipeline and the camera's view.

"Do we have any footage of the outside of the building?" Kara asked, her voice tinged with panic.

"Hang on, let me check," Barry replied. He clicked through the different camera feeds until he found one that showed the outside of STAR Labs. Hartley and Cisco appeared in it, roamed around for a bit, discussing something between themselves- soundlessly, since this particular feed didn't have audio- then they turned and disappeared up the nearby stairs and out of the frame.

"What the hell was Cisco thinking, letting Hartley out?" Kara demanded once Barry had switched off the monitor.

"You heard," Barry pointed out, thinking that in this case, Cisco deserved at least a modicum of sympathy. "Hartley told him that he knew what happened to Ronnie. That he knew how to find him."

"But we don't know if that's even _true_," Kara said frustratedly.

"Obviously Hartley was very convincing," Barry replied dryly. "If there's anything we know about him, it's that he's very good at getting inside of people's heads."

"Unfortunately," Kara growled.

"Look," Barry said. "Obviously we're not going to be able to find out anything more from here, so I'm going to head to my lab and start looking for Hartley and Cisco from there. Sound good?" Kara nodded, and off Barry went.

He found Cisco much sooner than he expected to- he was lying unconscious on the floor of his lab when he entered it.

"Cisco!" he cried, running over to him and attempting to shake him awake.

"What happened?" he asked when he finally stirred, wincing and groaning in pain as he did so.

"Hartley," Cisco explained. "I let him out and he brought us here, and then he got the drop on me. He used his cochlear implants to put me down, and then he escaped."

"Well, did he at least actually tell you what happened to Ronnie?" Barry asked. When Cisco shot him a puzzled look, he explained, "Kara and I saw the security footage from the pipeline."

"Oh," Cisco said quietly.

"You haven't answered my question," Barry pointed out after a few minutes of silence. Cisco nodded.

"He did," he said. There was a pause, presumably while he gathered his thoughts, then he went on, "Professor Martin Stein was at STAR Labs the night of the particle accelerator explosion. He specialized in transmutation, molecular transmogrophy, quantum splicing-"

"Taking two things and making them one," Barry interjected.

"Exactly," Cisco said, nodding. "Anyway, the accelerator explosion somehow transformed Ronnie into, essentially, pure energy, and then the dark matter merged him with Professor Stein."

"So the reason that Ronnie hasn't seemed like himself lately-" Barry began.

"Is because he's not," Cisco finished for him. "He's Martin Stein, in Ronnie's body." There was a long silence, then he said, "I shouldn't have let Hartley out. I should have known that it wasn't worth the risk."

"I don't know that it wasn't," Barry replied. "And anyway, it doesn't matter now. We have a much more pressing matter to deal with."

"Right," Cisco agreed, though he looked relieved to not have been taken to the proverbial woodshed for setting Hartley free. "We have to find Martin Stein."


	21. Firestorm

A week passed after Cisco's revelation about Ronnie and Martin Stein with no word on or sign of either of them, and found Kara doing her best to return to business as usual and Barry trying to navigate dating while also working as a hero. He'd recently started dating Linda Park, Iris' colleague at CCPN, and he'd lamented to Kara about how he kept having run out on their dates to stop crimes.

"I know I'm fast enough to be there and back before she notices that I've left, but that's not the point," he'd complained. "I just want to have one date, _one_, where I don't have to."

"Sorry, Barry," Kara had replied. "But that's the trade off you made when you decided to do this whole hero thing."

"Yeah, yeah, I know," Barry had grumbled. His romantic troubles were quickly forgotten when they recieved news that a physicist had been attacked by, according to several unsubstantiated- though probably no less true for being that- reports, the so-called "Burning Man".

"Well, it appears that letting Ronnie roam free is no longer an option," Wells said grimly when the team assembled in the Cortex to discuss how best to handle the situation.

"He's not even Ronnie anymore," Caitlin pointed out. "He's Martin Stein walking around in Ronnie's body, like a vampire."

"Is there a reason that Stein's brain is in control Ronnie's body, not the other way around?" Barry asked.

"Darwism, I suspect," Wells answered. "A brand new organism will select the strongest parts of itself in order to survive. Survival of the fittest- in this case, Ronnie's body, Stein's mind. In any event, he badly hurt an innocent man, and we have hunted metahumans for less. Caitlin"- He turned to her- "We need to know that you're on board with whatever needs to be done here." There was a long silence while they waited for Caitlin's answer, then she asked "How do we find him?"

"Quentin Quale, the scientist that Ronnie attacked, is a former colleague of Martin Stein," Wells replied. "If Martin is indeed in control, he may be trying to figure out exactly what happened to him."

"What do we know about him?" Barry asked. "I don't even know what Stein looks like." Wells pulled up a picture of the man in question on the nearest screens.

"Martin Stein," he said, gesturing toward them.

"That's Stein?" Barry asked.

"It is," Wells confirmed.

"I've seen him before," Barry said, sounding astonished by the realization.

"When?" Caitlin asked.

"On the train the day the accelerator exploded," Barry replied. He sounded like the sudden remembrance of the encounter had left him reeling, which Kara thought she understood. She was still having trouble wrapping her brain around it, and getting caught in an endless spiral of what could have been in the process.

She was still pondering it some hours later, sitting in the STAR Labs van outside of Stein's house while Barry, Caitlin and Wells were inside talking to his wife. She had opted to stay outside for two reasons- first, because she'd doubted that she'd have anything meaningful to contribute to the conversation, and second, so that if Ronnie- or Stein, rather- showed up unexpectedly, she'd be there to stop him from hurting anyone.

A short time later, the group emerged from the house and convened next to the van.

"So it appears Martin Stein and Ronnie Raymond have something in common besides sharing a body," Wells said. "They both feel the need to protect the women they love."

"Clarissa said she feels like she's being watched," Barry put in.

"Well, then, this has all the makings of a stakeout," Wells remarked.

"But Barry has a date tonight," Caitilin pointed out.

"I'll cancel," Barry said resignedly.

"No, no, go," Wells replied. "If we need you here, something tells me that we can get you back in a hurry." Barry nodded and raced off.

"Same goes for you," Wells told Kara before she could ask if they needed her here for the stakeout. "We'll call you if we need you." Kara nodded and set off in more or less the same direction that Barry had gone.

It was late at night before she heard anything. When she did, it was a text message telling her that she needed to get to Stein's house because he was there and he and Barry were in the middle of a tense battle. Kara arrived just in time to see Ronnie grab hold of Barry and launch himself into the air. Kara followed, not sure what she could do but knowing that she had to do _something_. Just as she caught up to them, Ronnie let go, and Barry plummeted toward the ground that was now hundreds of feet below. Kara dove after him, only just managing to grab hold of his shoulders and slow his headlong plummet into a more or less controlled dive, but they both still hit the pavement hard. Ronnie touched down a moment later, and readied fireballs to hurl at Barry.

"No!" Caitlin cried, leaping out of the van to step in front of Barry. Ronnie stopped in his tracks, then turned and flew off.

"Well, that was terrifying," Barry said when he was gone.

A while later, Kara waited in the Cortex for the rest of the team to return with Stein, whom they had managed to track down by means they hadn't bothered to explain to her. When they did return, Kara couldn't stop herself from staring. She was still having trouble deciding whether to refer to the person Caitlin was ushering off to get cleaned up and settled as Stein as Ronnie.

"Well, we got him," Barry said when Caitlin returned to the Cortex. "Them. Now what?"

"Well, Stein clearly thinks he can seperate himself from Ronnie's body using nuclear fission," Wells said.

"What do you think?" Caitlin asked.

"What do I think?" Well replied. "Is it possible? Theortically. But splitting an atom and splitting a man are two very different things." At that moment, Stein- Kara had decided to refer to him as Stein, seeing as that was who was in control- entered the room, and everyone turned to stare at him.

"I don't suppose it's necessary to point out you're all staring?" he asked. At those words, they all immediately found somewhere else to look.

"Our apologies," Wells murmured.

"It is remarkable," Stein said, striding further into the room, his formal manner of speech sounding strange emerging from such a visibly young body. "I feel clearer than I have since the accident. What did you give me?"

"A cocktail of anti-psychotics, depressants, mood stablizers," Wells replied, reading off a mental list.

"The same formula used to treat dissociative identity disorder," Stein remarked. Turning to Caitlin, he asked "I assume this was your idea?" Caitlin nodded, her eyes downcast.

"Very clever, Cait," Stein said with a slight smile.

"Don't call me that," Caitlin whispered, pain in her voice. She kept her gaze fixed on the floor. "Please."

"I apologize," Stein replied.

"We'd like to run some tests on you, if you don't mind," Caitlin said, back to business, which in this case Kara saw was more a coping mechanism than anything else.

"Of course, Doctor Snow," Stein said, and allowed Caitlin to lead him out of the Cortex.

Time passed and found them all in a panic, desperate to figure out a way to separate Stein and Ronnie before they did so forcibly and leveled Central City in a nuclear explosion. Wells disappeared for a while and returned with plans for something called a quantum splicer, which would, as he explained it, allow Stein and Ronnie to seperate from each other without harm. The only problem was getting it to them on time- while they'd been debating Stein had gone out to the badlands, clearly intent on sacrifing himself.

"Now, Barry, even you can't outrun a nuclear blast, so you get this device to Professor Stein and you get out of there as fast as you can," Wells said, handing Barry the quantum splicer.

"What are you doing?" Barry asked when Caitlin snatched the splicer out of Wells' hand before he could grab it.

"I'm going with you," Caitlin said.

"No, you're not!" Barry cried, following after her.

"It's too dangerous!" Wells declared.

"Barry doesn't know how to operate the splicer," Caitlin said in counter to Wells' words.

"Cisco's gonna talk me through it!" Barry protested.

"There's not enough time," Caitlin said, shaking her head. "Let's go." Barry looked back at the rest of the group.

"Go!" Wells said, making a shooing gesture.

"Good luck," Kara murmured, but Caitlin and her brother were already gone.


	22. Aftereffects

"Barry!" Wells cried over the crackle of static coming from Barry's comm. "Barry, what happened out there?" No answer.

"Are you guys okay?" Cisco asked. Still nothing. In an instant, without any prompting, Kara had her suit on and was flying to Barry and Caitlin's last known location. She arrived in time to see Barry helping Caitlin up off the ground and speaking into his comm, probably- at last- answering Cisco's question. Kara touched down nearby, her landing sending up puffs of ash from beneath her feet, and looked around. Their immediate surroundings reminded her of nothing so much as what she'd always imagined Hiroshima and Nagasaki had looked like in the immediate aftermath of the nuclear detonations that had taken place there- burnt out and desolate, with flakes of ash drifting slowly through the air like snow.

"Oh God," Caitlin said suddenly. "The nuclear explosion. There's no telling how much radiation we were exposed to."

"Wait, wait, wait, this can't be," Kara heard Cisco say over the comm. "The Geiger counter in the suit- it's reading less than one millirad."

"But that's normal," Barry said, clearly puzzled.

"There's no radiation," Wells confirmed. At that, Barry turned to Caitlin and said, "Let's go," then scooped her up in his arms and raced off toward the place where they'd last seen Stein. Kara followed, arriving a few minutes after they did. They found a crater there, and Ronnie lying at the bottom of it. The only question that remained was whether he was himself again or whether he was still Stein.

"Did it work?" Cisco asked over the comm. "Did you separate them?"

"I don't know," Barry answered. Meanwhile, Caitlin was making her way carefully down the slope of the crater to Ronnie's side.

"Ronnie?" she asked, and Kara waited with bated breath at her brother's side to see what would happen next. Ronnie stirred as Caitlin approached him, and when he looked over at her, she said, "Tell me your name."

"Ronnie Raymond," Ronnie answered with a smile, and reached up to kiss her deeply. He pulled away long enough to murmur, "Cait, it's me," before kissing her again, and at that point, Kara had to look away, because she felt like she was intruding on something that was meant to be private.

"Um, pardon me," a voice said behind them, and they turned to see Martin Stein standing a short distance from the lip of the crater. Gesturing toward his ripped clothing, he added, "Obviously, I need a change of clothes."

"Nice to see you in the flesh again, Professor," Barry said with a smile, nodding to him. Stein returned the nod distractedly, seeming confused. Pressing a hand to the side of his head to activate his comm, Barry said, "We're coming home. _All _of us." and off they went.

Back at STAR Labs, Kara hung back to give the rest of the team space to have their reunion with Ronnie. She hadn't known him, and she once again felt like a voyeur or at the very least an intruder on a private moment. Eventually, she left STAR Labs altogether, figuring that they would call her if they needed her.

It was only once she'd reached the street outside that she realized that she didn't have a specific destination in mind as far as where to go now. The only thing that had been on her mind up to this point was getting out of STAR Labs. She wandered aimlessly through the streets of Central City for a while until she found herself at Jitters. By that time, it was sundown, and she was grateful that she'd never had to worry about getting mugged or assaulted.

Entering the building, she was surprised to see Ronnie and Caitlin, hunched over a table in the middle of what looked to be a pretty serious conversation. Either that, or an argument. It was hard to tell from where she was. Cursing the fact that she couldn't seem to stop accidentally butting into other people's private moments today, Kara was just about to leave when suddenly the red dots of laser sights appeared everywhere, and the patrons and staff of Jitters went down, tranq darts in their necks. Kara felt one strike her and bounce off, and she dropped to the ground, realizing that she should keep up the ruse that she'd been knocked out until these unknown attackers were gone and she could figure out what was going on and coming up with a strategy to deal with it.

When the loud bangs and screams and the hiss of gas canisters died down, Kara got up slowly from the floor to find everyone in the building unconscious and Ronnie and Caitlin gone. She could only hope that the lasster had gotten out when all of this had started. She ran out into the alley behind the building in time to see the STAR Labs van up and Caitlin open the door and shout "Get in!" and then Ronnie was hauling Barry up from the ground and shoving him into the van before jumping in himself and it was driving off before Kara had any time to react. At a loss, she leaped into the air and followed the van back to STAR Labs from the air, wondering what the hell had just happened.

A short time later, Kara stood in the Cortex, watching in horror as Caitlin pulled steel shards- like metal porcupine quills- out of Barry, wincing each time the latter yanked another one free and the former screamed in pain.

"I'm so stupid," Caitlin said angrily as she dropped a shard into the metal tray at Barry's beside. "Jason Rush- the grad student who was helping Professor Stein with his Firestorm research- he said that the Army took all of Professor Stein's material when he disappeared. I should have known it was General Eiling."

_Damn it_, Kara thought bitterly, realizing that she'd missed some critical information. She could only conclude that this General Eiling, whoever he was, had made a move on Ronnie, and that he was the one who had done this to Barry. She felt herself get heated with rage at the thought.

"Not your fault," Wells said, interrupting Kara's thoughts of vengeance. "He still thinks you hold the keys to the ultimate human weapon. Both of you."

"Okay, let's just finish this," Barry cut in in a pained voice. "I gotta get to Stein's house. Eiling's gonna be after him too."

"Stein's fine," Ronnie said suddenly.

"How do you know?" Cisco asked.

"He's right there," Ronnie replied, pointing. They all turned in the direction he had pointed and sure enough, there was Stein, standing in the doorway of the Cortex.

"I don't think Mr. Raymond and I are as distinctive as we'd hoped," he said dryly.

As soon as Caitlin had finished pulling the shards out of Barry, she took him, Ronnie, Cisco, and Stein into the treadmill room to confer with them while Wells went to go and talk to Eiling, hoping to find some way to negotiate with him and Kara stayed by herself in the Cortex. She just didn't think it was a good idea for her to be around other people right now. She wanted to hurt Eiling for hurting Barry, when she'd never before in her life _wanted_ to hurt anyone. The thought, the sheer violence of it, scared her, and she needed time alone to get a handle on it.

The next thing she knew, the team was in a panic. Apparently, after they'd finished conferring and where all either out of the building or otherwise occupied, Eiling had kidnapped Stein.

"Where do you think Eiling took Professor Stein?" Caitlin asked when they regrouped in the Cortex to figure out what to do now.

"I imagine some off the books military research facility," Wells answered.

"We have to get him back," Barry said urgently.

"Easy," Wells cautioned. "Eiling has already demonstrated that he has the weaponry to disable the Flash, or worse. And for all we know, he might have some way of taking Supergirl off the board as well." At this, he locked eyes with Kara, who shifted uncomfortably under the scrutiny.

"Well, we can't just let him turn Stein into a weapon," Caitlin said.

"How do we find him?" Ronnie asked. When everyone turned to look at him, he added "What?"

They soon found out what- as it turned out, the connection between Ronnie and Stein was far from temporary, and the former quickly figured out how to use it to find the latter. Before long, he was heading with Kara and Barry to that location- an old decommissioned military research facility 300 miles away from STAR Labs- to rescue Stein. Together they stormed the building and managed to rescue Stein in the split second before Eiling was about to shoot him in the head. Faced with a military onslaught designed to prevent their escape, soldiers armed with weapons designed to stop them both- though, despite Wells' suspicions, Kara hadn't known that Eiling had even known about her until this very moment- the Allen siblings had no choice but to take a step back and watch as Ronnie and Stein used the quantum splicer to merge with each other once again in order to fight off Eiling and his forces.

"Home?" Barry asked when it was all over. Ronnie nodded, and off they went back to STAR Labs.

A few days later, the team went to see Ronnie and Stein off, as they had decided to leave Central City to find someone who could teach them more about their powers as well as stay one step ahead of Eiling, who was sure to come after them again once he managed to re-marshall his forces. As Kara watched them merge with each other once more and fly off, she knew that she hadn't seen the last of them. She looked forward to their next adventure together.


	23. Dangerous Weather

"I'm still iffy on whether bowling is an actual sport," Linda quipped in response to Barry's suggestion that she write a piece on the bowling alley they dat on a date. It was one of Barry's favorite places in the world, but the owner had fallen on financial hardship lately and was thinking of selling it. He hated the thought that he might lose the place where he had made so many great memories.

"I wonder the same," Eddie said in response to Linda's words. It had been a random coincidence that they had run into him and Iris and that they'd ended up joining them, but Barry was glad that it had happened. He was having fun, and Linda at least seemed to be enjoying herself.

"Well, sport or hobby, I am still better than you," Iris teased, reaching up, apparently unthinkingly, to wipe a bit of ketchup from the corner of Barry's mouth. He saw Linda's expression darken at the gesture, and he wondered what was wrong.

"All right, well, I'm serious," he said, shaking it off, resolving to talk to her about it later. "A little bit of press and the lanes could be designated as, like, a landmark or something."

"Yeah," Iris agreed.

"Oh, Eddie," Barry said, noticing that the screen above their heads was displaying his name. "You're up, man."

"Oh," Eddie said, not particularly enthusiastically. All the fun seemed to have suddenly gone out of the evening for him. "Right."

"Woo!" Iris exclaimed as he got up from his chair, giving him a playful shove forward. "Go get 'em babe!" Barry resisted the urge to roll his eyes at her antics, and before long he had shoved the matter of whatever was going on with Linda to the back of his mind. There'd be plenty of time to deal with it later, and right now he was having too much fun to let it interfere.

Before too long, however, Barry's night was cut short by reports of strange goings on at the morgue. He made his excuses to Linda and raced off, conferring with Cisco via comms on the way and eventually deciding not to call Kara for this one. He was pretty sure he could handle it on his own.

Then something strange happened. As he ran, he saw a flash of blue-white light out of the corner of his eye, and he looked to his left to see a copy of himself running along beside him, easily keeping pace with him, shimmering and flickering a mirage. He skidded to a sudden halt in the middle of a busy street and looked around frantically, but the copy or mirage or whateve it was had disappeared the moment he'd stopped running. Convinced that he must have been seeing things, Barry shook his head to clear it and continued on his way to the morgue.

"What's going on?" Cisco asked when he arrived. "What do you see?"

"A dead body," Barry replied distractedly, staring at the motionless form of the coroner lying on the floor a short distance away.

"Barry, you're in a morgue," Cisco pointed out in an exasperated tone. "You're going to have to be a little more specific than that."

"It's the coroner," Barry clarified. "He's dead."

A short time later, when the official call about the crime scene came in from the CCPD, Barry returned to the crime scene and set immediately to the work of his regular day job. Preoccupied, his mind wrapped up in work and the problem with Linda and what he'd seen- or thought he'd seen while out as the Flash, he crossed the room without watching where he was going and ran straight into Captain Singh, spilling the coffee in his hand all over him.

"Allen, my fiance just bought me this!" Singh exclaimed irritably, rather futiley attempting to wipe latte foam off of his admittedly rather nice coat.

"Yeah," Barry said, because he didn't know what else to say, grimacing awkardly. "I'm so sorry, Cap-"

"Just help Joe figure out who did this!" Singh interjected, gesturing in Joe's direction before walking off in a huff.

"Mhmm," Barry mumbled, nodding, though Singh was already out of earshot.

"What's with all the water?" Joe asked as he approached him. "Did the sprinkler system go off or something?"

"No, I checked all the sprinklers," Barry replied. "They're all intact. But look at this." He crouched down and picked up a piece of ice from the floor with a forceps, holding it up for Joe to see.

"What is that?" he asked. "Ice?" Barry nodded.

"Mmhmm," he confirmed. "The coroner has multiple impact bruises on his torso, all the size of a tennis ball." He pulled up the coroner's shirt to Joe the bruises in question.

"Judging by the amount of ice and water on the ground," he went on, "I'm guessing he was killed by hail."

"Hail?" Joe asked incredulously. "In here?"

"Yeah," Barry replied.

"Do you think this was Snart?" Joe asked.

"No, his cold gun couldn't have done this," Barry replied, shaking his head.

"Joe, we got something," Eddie announced, cutting their conversation short. He was holding an audio recorder in one hand. "The coroner's office just installed an automated dictation system. Listen to this." He hit a button on the recorder, and they heard the coroner's voice beg, "Please. No more."

"I'll _stop_ when you tell me," a second voice growled.

"_Stop_" the coroner pleaded.

"Who killed him?" the second voice demanded. "I want a name."

"I know that voice," Joe said. "That's Mardon."

"Clyde Mardon is dead," Eddie said disbelievingly.

"It's not Clyde Mardon, it's his brother," Joe explained. "Mark."

"It was Detective West," the coroner said on the recording. "He shot him. Joe West killed your brother."

"He'll pay for what he did," Mardon promised, and then there was nothing but the crackling of ice and screaming for the rest of the recording.

"So Clyde Mardon has a brother?" Caitlin asked after Barry had filled the team in a while later. Kara wasn't present, as Barry still hadn't called her in. He just didn't think he'd reached a point where he needed her help yet.

"And both brothers survived the plane crash and then the dark matter from the particle accelerator explosion affected them both in virtually the same way," Wells said.

"Yeah, only Mark's powers seem to be a lot more precise," Barry put in. "To be able to control the weather like _that_? Indoors?"

"You'd have to be a weather wizard," Cisco said. "Oooh, I've been waiting since week one to use that one."

"So, I'm guessing you running around a twister in the opposite direction isn't going to do the trick this time." Joe said grimly. He addressed Barry, but it was Cisco who answered.

"I just remembered," he said, "during our run in with Mardon- Clyde Mardon- I was tinkering with something to help attract atmoshperic electrons."

"Like a grounding mechanism?" Barry asked.

"Yes," Cisco confirmed. "Because the only way that Mardon can control the weather weather is if he can tap into the atmosphere's natural electric circuit, and if we take away that circuit… clear skies."

"Singh's checking in," Joe said suddenly, showing Barry his phone. "I gotta go."

"Yeah, I'll meet you at the station," Barry said.

"Joe, we'll find Mardon," Wells told him as he headed for the door. "Don't worry."

"I'm not worried at all," Joe replied, and then he was gone.

"Well, he's taking being targeted by a revenge seeking metahuman rather well, I must say," Wells said. Glancing over at Barry, he added, "Don't worry, Barry. Joe will be fine, I promise."

"Yeah, no, I know," Barry replied. "I actually wanted to talk to you about something else." He'd decided that whatever he'd seen- or thought he'd seen- on the way to the morgue, Wells was the most likely person to be able to help him understand it. In response to Wells' questioning look, he went on, "Last night, on my way to the morgue, I saw something."

"What did you see?" Wells asked.

"I was running and turned and saw myself," Barry replied. "Or, I don't know, another Flash running beside me."

"Interesting," Wells said.

"Yeah," Barry agreed. "What do you think it was?"

"Could be an optical illusion," Wells replied. "A mirroring effect cause by wind shear and light. A speed mirage, if you will."

"It didn't seem like that," Barry said, shaking his head. "It was… he seemed… _real_."

"I'll tell you what," Wells said. "Let's focus on finding Mardon, and once he's safely contained in the pipeline, we'll investigate this." Barry nodded, and Wells wheeled himself away, off to attend to other matters.

Things proceeded as normal from that point out- normal police work, normal problems, normal _life_. Then, it all went wrong. As he was driving back to the police station with Joe after leaving it to get lunch, Mardon attacked them, and Barry barely managed to get them both out of the car before it was blown up by a lightning bolt. Captain Singh confined Joe to the precinct as a result of the attack- for his own protection, he said- and Barry had a hard time convincing him actually follow the captain's orders. Eventually, though, he manage- or thought he did, at least- and returned to STAR Labs to try and find Mardon before he could try anything else.

However, the situation with Mardon turned out to be the least of their problems. Iris asked Barry to meet her at Jitters, where she shared with him her suspicions that Wells had been involved in the disappearance of Simon Stagg. He wasn't sure he believed that Wells was capable of anything like what Iris was describing, but he passed what she'd told him on to Caitlin and Cisco all the same. Soon after, he got a call that Mardon was attacking the precinct, but while he arrived in time to stop his attack and chase him off, he was too late to stop him from putting Captain Singh in the hospital. The next thing he knew, Joe was running off Mardon himself, after extracting a promise from him that he would stay with Iris and keep her safe. Soon, however, the very thing that Barry had feared would happen came to pass- Mark Mardon took Joe prisoner. Barry went with Iris to the waterfront to meet Mardon, just as the person in question had told her to do if she ever wanted to see her father alive again. They arrived to find a massive storm brewing on the horizon, an enormous tidal wave bearing down on the city.

"Iris, you need to get out of here, okay?" Barry said urgently, grabbing her by the arm. "You need to get as far away from here as possible."

"I'm not leaving you!" Iris cried.

"Iris, please-" Barry started to say.

"Listen to me," Iris interjected. "Ever since the night you told me how you feel, I have not been able to stop thinking about you. At first, I was really mad, and then I realized that the reason I couldn't stop thinking about you was because I didn't want to." Barry caught his breath, smiling in spite of himself, in spite of the peril of the situation. This was everything he'd wanted to hear Iris say to him, but why now? Why did it have to happen at such a terrible time?

"I never stopped thinking about you," he told Iris in a murmur. He kissed her then, and tried not to think of it as a goodbye, tried to force the thought from his mind about how it was just like what Felicity had told him had happened when Oliver had gone off to fight Ra's Al Ghul, how he had told her that he loved her as a goodbye, because he hadn't been expecting to make it back. This wasn't that, he told himself. This _wouldn't_ be that. He would stop this, and he would make it back.

Pulling away from Iris at last, he moved to stand beside her and immediately called Caitlin, determind to figure out how to stop what was coming.

"Caitlin," he said when she picked up.

"Barry, I need to talk to you," she said. "Doctor Wells, he's not-"

"Hey, there's no time for that right now, all right?" Barry interjected. "There's a tsunami heading for the city. How do I stop it?"

"Theoretically, if you can create a vortex barrier along the coastline, a wall of wind, that would be able to sap the tidal wave of its energy before it hits the city," Caitlin replied.

"By running back and forth," Barry said. "How fast?"

"I don't know if you _can_ run that fast," Caitlin warned. All Barry knew was that he had to try.

"I'm so sorry," he said, hanging up the phone and turning to Iris. "I didn't want you to find out this way." In the next instant, he had his suit on, and Iris stared at him, smiling in wonderment.

"Go!" he shouted, and then he was running, up and down the coast, faster and faster and faster. Then, suddenly, there was a flash of blue- white light, and he was running alongside himself again. He skidded to a sudden stop and immediately heard and saw the same things he had the night before on his way to the morgue- the dogs barking at each other, the man spinning a sign, the woman screaming for a taxi.

"Oh boy," Barry muttered as it sunk in- somehow, he had traveled back in time to the previous day.


	24. Changes in Time

Kara was worried. All day long, Barry had been seeming to exhibit precognition, knowing how conversations and events would unfold before they actually happened. This ability had come out of nowhere, and she was concerned that perhaps it may have been a side effect of his super speed that they hadn't yet considered. Not knowing what else to do, she headed to STAR Labs and brought up her concerns to Wells, knowing one thing for certain- that if anyone would know how to handle this, it was him.

"I'm worried about Barry," she told him. "Today, all of a sudden, it's like he has precognition. He seems to know how certain things will happen before they actually do."

"And this worries you because?" Wells asked.

"I'm just wondering if maybe it's a side effect of his super speed that we hadn't considered," Kara replied. "And I'm concerned about what effects it might have in the long run."

"All right," Wells said, nodding. "Well, let me talk to Barry and see if I can't manage to puzzle out a bit more about the phenomenon you've described. Sound good?"

"Yes," Kara replied. "Thank you."

"Of course," Wells replied in an oddly distant tone of voice, and wheeled himself steadily away, out of Kara's sight.

Later, completely by accident, she overheard Wells and Barry talking.

"You ruptured the timeline, didn't you?" Wells was saying when Kara came into earshot, which, for her, was still quite a long way off. "You're experiencing temporal reversion."

"Yeah," she heard Barry reply, sounding relieved to at last have a term for what he was going through.

"How long?" Wells asked.

"A day and some change," Barry answered. "It's like I'm living it all over again.

"Yes, well, that's good," Wells said. "That means there's not too much you could have messed up yet. How did this happen?"

"I- I don't know," Barry stammered. "I mean, I was running faster than I ever have, and the first time that I lived this day, some really horrible things happened. There was a tidal wave, and-"

"No," Wells interjected. "Do not tell me. I do not want to know anything about the future you experienced. Nothing!"

"Okay, but Doctor Wells, I-" Barry began.

"Barry," Wells cut in. "Time is an extremely fragile construct. Any deviation, no matter how small, could result in a cataclysm. Now, here's what you're going to do- everything you did before. Every word you uttered, every step you took, you're going to do it again, and you're not going to tell _anyone_ that this happened."

"Okay," Barry replied, though he didn't sound particularly enthused by the prospect, and as far as Kara knew that was the end of it. She was relieved to have an explanation for Barry's apparent precognition- whether she'd been meant to hear that explanation or not- but aside from that her worry continued unabated. She knew that it wasn't very likely that Barry would actually do what Wells had told him and not do anything to change the course of this day. It was obvious that some terrible event was looming on the horizon, and that Barry thought that he could stop it. There was no way that he could be convinced not to try, and Kara worried that he was going to get hurt.

A few hours later, Barry walked into STAR Labs with Mark Mardon in tow. Kara, like the rest of the team, knew that he had been the one who had murdered the coroner, but she hadn't expected Barry to bring him in quite so quickly. At least he hadn't gotten hurt the way she'd feared he would, but, as he proceeded to lock Mardon up in his own specialized cell in the pipeline, Kara could see that she _had _been right about there being little chance of Barry doing what he'd been told, as Wells was cross with him in a way that suggested that by going out and capturing Mardon, he'd ignored his express command that he not do anything to alter the timeline.

They didn't have time to confront the problem, because shortly after Barry showed up at STAR Labs with Mardon, Cisco disappeared under odd and suspicious circumstances, and they soon learned that Leonard Snart had taken him hostage, which unfortunately tracked with what Joe had told Barry about him being back in town. When Cisco was finally released and made it back to STAR Labs, he told them, while obviously filled with guilt and regret over the entire situation, that Snart had forced him to rebuild his cold gun and Rory's heat gun, along with creating a weapon for his sister to wield, as well as reveal the identities of the Flash and Supergirl. At this news, Kara had a moment of silent communication with her brother. This would be the third time they had faced off against Snart, and normally they wouldn't be worried about the probable outcome, but the fact that he now knew their identities complicated things. It put them, their loved ones, and anyone they associated with on a regular basis at risk. Nevertheless, Kara could see that they both knew that they had to do something. Snart couldn't be allowed to break the law indiscriminately just because he possessed knowledge that could be used to hurt them. With that decided, they knew that the only thing they could do now was analyze what Snart had been doing since he had returned to Central City to figure out what his next move was and then stop him before he could make it.

"The casino wasn't the target," Barry told them a short time later, after their requisite digging into Snart's activities since his return had uncovered the information.

"Then why did he do it?" Cisco asked.

"Casinos keep _tons_ of cash on hand to cover their markers, not to mention the money that they make," Kara answered, remembering the information from when she'd done a piece on said establishments.

"But when they're under attack, the protocol is to relocate the money outside of the casino," Barry added.

"So, that was Snart's plan all along," Wells concluded. "To trigger the move."

"Okay," Cisco said, speaking for all of them. "Where is it now?"

It wasn't long before they found the answer, and Kara found herself following after Barry as he snatched Snart and sped him away from the would-be scene of the crime.

"Good to see you, Barry," Snart taunted when they came to a stop in the woods, outside city limits. "You too, Kara."

"We have to talk," they both told him in unison. Barry pulled down his cowl and added, "I know Cisco told you who we are."

"Can't really blame the kid for giving you up," Snart said noncomitally. "You or his brother? Come on, I put him in a tight spot, the same kind I've got you in right now." Kara wanted to say something in response, but she sensed that they should let Snart speak his piece, and for the moment Barry seemed to be speaking for both himself and her anyway.

"You can't really stop me not that I know who you are," Snart went on.

"I could speed you to my private prison where you'll never see the light of day," Barry said. Kara couldn't resist throwing a shocked glance in his direction at those words. The pipeline was meant for metahumans- which Snart was not- and even then only because there was nowhere else they could be kept where they wouldn't be a danger to anyone else. It wasn't meant to function like the ARGUS prison on Lian Yu.

"You could, but then I wouldn't be around to stop my own private uplink that'll broadcast you and your sister's identities to the world," Snart replied smoothly, unperturbed. "So, the million dollar question- what to do with me now, Barry Allen?"

"I won't let you keep stealing whatever you want whenever you want," Barry said. "It has to end."

"Can't do that," Snart replied, tilting his head slightly in the barest gesture of his disagreement. "It's what I do."

"Then find a new line of work," Kara put in, finally finding an opportunity to speak.

"Don't want to," Snart replied, turning to her.

"Why is that?" Kara asked, her curiousity piqued.

"The same reason you two keep running after guys like me," Snart said. "The adrenaline. The thrill of the chase. I love this game, and I'm very good at it."

"Then go play it somewhere else," Barry interjected. "Leave Central City."

"Can't do that either," Snart replied. "I love it here." He inhaled deeply and added, "This city is my home." Barry scoffed.

"You've seen what we can do," he said, gesturing between himself and Kara. "You know

that we can stop you. If you want to keep pushing your luck, go for it, but from now on no one else dies."

"If you're as good as you say you are, you don't need to kill anyone to get what you want," Kara put in.

"That's true," Snart conceded.

"And if you or anyone in your rogue's gallery goes near any of our friends or family again, we don't care _who_ you tell our identity to," Barry went on. "We're putting you away."

"I guess your secret's safe," Snart replied. "For now."

"Oh, I don't suppose you'd give me a ride back to town, would you?" he asked after a moment. Barry just smirked at him and raced off, leaving Kara to follow after him.

Later, as they headed into Jitters for a celebratory coffee, they ran into Caitlin, Iris, and Eddie. The latter, upon spotting them, ran up to Barry and enveloped him in a hug.

"I'm so sorry, pal," he said, pulling back. "It's not like me to hit anyone. I don't know what came over me."

"Uh… thanks Eddie," Barry replied, looking bewildered, and Kara had to wonder exactly when and for what reason Eddie had hit him. "It's- it's okay."

"You poor thing," Iris put in, laying her hand on Barry's shoulder. "I had no idea."

"Is that right?" Barry asked, still confused. "Um, what exactly did you have no idea about?"

"I was just explaining to Iris and Eddie about your lightning psychosis," Caitlin said, giving Barry a pointed look.

"My what now?" Barry asked.

"Your lightning psychosis," Caitlin repeated. "How your recent odd behavior is a side effect of being struck by lighting: mood swings, sudden outbursts of affection, and other… lapses in judgement."

"He _has_ had all of those things," Iris supplied. "He told me he had ESP."

"Yes, it's a very uncommon neurological phenomenon," Caitlin replied. "We're only just starting to research it in keuranomedicine. It's why Barry's been spending so much time at STAR Labs."

"I just wish you would have told me," Iris told Barry softly.

"It hardly feels real sometimes," Barry replied.

"We're just happy you're getting help," Eddie put in.

"Yeah," Iris agreed.

"So… we're good?" Barry asked.

"Yeah, we're good," Iris confirmed. Barry nodded, looking relieved, and Kara took the opportunity to pull him away to get the coffee they'd come in for the first place.

"What did you do?" she asked as they made their way to the counter. Barry shook his head but otherwise didn't answer her.

"Seriously Bar, what happened?" Kara persisted. "What did you do that was so bad that Caitlin literally had to _make up_ a neurological disorder to cover for you?"

"I don't want to talk about it," Barry grumbled as they waited for their coffee, and then clammed up, evidently determined to hold to his statement of not wanting to talk about whatever it was that had happened. Despite that, Kara's curiosity had gotten the better of her and she continued to badger Barry about it the whole way home in the way only a younger sibling could, laughing depsite herself at her brother's stubborn refusal to give in.


	25. Uncovered Truths

"All right," Barry said, pulling down a sheet on his investigation board. "This is everything we know about Harrison Wells, which is admittedly not a lot."

"Didn't you read a whole book about him?" Joe asked, puzzled.

"Yeah," Barry confirmed. "Six _hundred_ pages, and the big takeaway is that he's enigmatic."

"A speedster tried to kill you when you were a kid," Joe pointed out, unnecessarily. "Wells' machine turned _you_ into a speedster. That's way too many coincidences for this old cop." Barry buried his face in his hands for a moment. After Mason Bridge had disappeared right after he'd started investigating Wells, he had been forced to accept that the latter was not all that he seemed, but the lack of information was making things difficult, to say nothing of the fact that some part of Barry kept fighting the idea that, after all Wells had done to help him, he could be anything but good.

"Do you think that he wanted me to become the Flash?" he asked, lifting his head to look at Joe once more.

"Everything he's done since the night you got struck by lightning- bringing you to STAR Labs, giving you the suit, training you- it's all been to keep you safe," Joe replied. Ordinarily that would have sounded like a point in Wells' favor, but Joe's tone of voice made it clear that he thought there was some ulterior motive at play.

"And to make me faster," Barry added. "Wells said once that he needed more speed from me." He paused for a moment, thinking, then asked "Why?"

"I don't know," Joe replied, shaking his head. "But he wants something from you, Barry. We just need to figure out what it is."

"Well, let's go get him," Barry said insistently, leaning forward in his chair. "Let's get some answers."

"We can't do that now, as much as we might want to," Joe cautioned.

"Joe, you had your suspicions about Wells from the beginning," Barry countered. "You thought he might _be_ the man in yellow."

"Except the blood from your house didn't match him," Joe pointed out.

"All tight, so maybe he's not the Reverse Flash," Barry said, "but you think he knows what happened that night."

"Whatever Wells wants from you, it started fifteen years ago," Joe replied. "He's been patient. _Scary_ patient. You have to listen to me on this- we need to be just as patient."

"Yeah," Barry mumbled in agreement, and rolled the sheet on his investigation board back up.

Suddenly, there came the sound of explosions, muffled by distance and the walls of the building. Barry ran to the window and saw plumes of smoke rising into the sky in the distance, in the space beyond the rows of buildings that bordered the precinct.

"Kara," he said, getting ahold of her on the phone as he turned away from the window and headed for the door of his lab. "We have a situation." He waited only long enough for her to respond, "I know. I'm on my way." before he was off.

Later, once they'd taken care of the bombs, which turned out to be floating down from the sky attached to miniature parachutes- thankfully with no casualties- they reconvened in STAR Labs after the perpetrator of the bombing revealed himself in a crazed video message that he broadcast all over the city- someone calling himself the Trickster, who as it turned out was a mere copycat of the original Trickster, a psychopath who had terrorized Central City twenty years ago. However, it seemed unlikely, at least for the moment, that the two Tricksters were working together- when Barry went with Joe to Iron Heights to talk to the original Trickster, he was so enraged by the very _idea_ of the copycat that it seemed highly unlikely that he would have been willing to ally himself with him. Then, after dead ends in their investigation and another message from the copycat Trickster, the person in question set off a diversion to distract Barry, Kara, and the police while he broke the original Trickster out of Iron Heights. It was then that they all realized, too late, that the latter's outrage at the actions of the former had been nothing but an act. They'd been working together from the beginning.

When next they heard from them, it was via a clever subversion from Iris and Kara, who were both attending the mayor's fundraiser at City Hall for work and, by calling Joe and Barry, respectively, were able to get word of the Tricksters ransoming the guests at the fundraiser for the antidote to a poison they'd slipped them to them and the rest of the team at STAR Labs. Barry felt his heart against his ribcage with fear. Kara's Kryptonian physiology meant she was immune to Earthly toxins, but Iris had no such advantage. If he didn't act quickly, she could die. Thankfully, he wasn't lacking for speed.

Racing into City Hall moments later, he charged past the new Trickster and grabbed the first.

"Where's the antidote?" he demanded, slamming him against a wall. The Trickster smiled wickedly, and Barry found himself wishing that criminals here were as afraid of the Flash as the ones in Starling City were of the Arrow.

"It's where you'll be soon," the Trickster cackled. "Heaven!" At that moment, the second Trickster stepped forward and fit something around Barry's wrist.

"Are you familiar with the movie Speed?" the first Trickster went on. "Keanu Reeves, Sandra Bullock? See, you're the bus and that's the bomb. A kinetic bomb, actually, and if you go below 600 miles per hour, it'll explode. The same thing happens if you try to remove it." The bomb on Barry's wrist started beeping, and the Trickster added, "Oooh, it's active! Run, run, run, run!" With no other option, Barry turned and ran from the building.

"Cisco!" he shouted over his comm as he went.

"He wasn't lying," Cisco said immediately. "The thing's linked to a speedometer, and it _will_ blow if you stop moving."

"Well, I can't run forever," Barry pointed out. There was a long silence on the other end of the line, and then Wells spoke. "Barry, do you see any walls nearby?"

"Why?" Barry asked.

"Because I need you to run into one," Wells replied. "Or, more accurately, through one."

"What?" Barry heard Cisco and Caitlin exclaim in the background, but he was silent. Surely Wells would explain what he intended to happen here.

"If you vibrate at the natural frequency of air, your cells will be in a state of excitement that should allow you to phase right through that wall, leaving the bomb on the other side," Wells said after a moment.

"Should?" Barry asked worriedly, but it was too late. He'd already changed his trajectory, and a tanker truck parked in the street was in the distance, bearing down on him at impossible speed.

"You can do this," Wells reassured him. "I believe in you."

"I can't do it!" Barry cried, sure that he was about to run headlong into that tanker truck.

"Listen to me, Barry," Wells said. "Breathe. _Breathe._ Feel the air, feel that wind on your face. Feel the ground, your feet lifting you up, pushing you forward, and the lightning. Barry, feel the lightning. Feel its power, its electricity pumping through your veins, coursing through you, traveling to every nerve in your body like a shock. You're no longer _you_ now. You're part of something greater. You're part of a speed force. It's yours. Now do it!" As Wells spoke, Barry felt a deep calm steal over him, and then he was running _through _the tanker truck, leaving the bomb to explode harmlessly behind him.

"Barry?" Caitlin asked in his comm.

"That felt weird," were the only words Barry could manage to get out in reply at first. Then, a moment later, he added, "I'm good," knowing that the team needed the reassurance. Finally, remembering that he still had work to do, he ran back to City Hall and administered the anitdote to the Tricksters' poison to the people gathered there, including Kara, though that last had mostly been for the sake of keeping up appearances.

Later, after the Tricksters had been apprehended, he met Joe and Eddie at his lab, still dressed in his suit. Revealing his identity to the latter, he helped Joe convince him to keep Iris from investigating Mason Bridge's disappearance, as such actions would likely cause her to become Wells' next target. However, that still left one last loose end to be tied up- the realization Barry had had about Wells, which, in all the activity of the last few hours, he hadn't gotten a chance to tell anyone about yet. That chance came during dinner at the West house later that night.

"Keeping her in the dark, it's for her protection," Joe warned Eddie once Iris had left the room, evidently sensing that he was feeling disagreeable about lying to her.

"That's debatable, and we will have that debate," Eddie replied, "but for now, what's our next move? How do we figure out what Wells is up to?"

"When Wells was talking me through phasing so I could get the Trickster's bomb off my wrist," Barry spoke up, seeing his opportunity to reveal what he'd realized, "the way he described my being the Flash, running, feel the wind and the power… it's like he was speaking from experience."

"What are you saying?" Joe asked.

"I don't know how, but he's the man in yellow," Barry answered. "Harrison Wells is the Reverse Flash."


	26. All Star Team-Up

"Kara, we got another one," Barry's voice came over her comm.

"Where?" she asked, already banking mid-flight in preparation to change her trajectory.

"Eighteenth and Olive," Barry replied. "Robbery in progress at the Shiny Diamond. I'd get it myself, but-"

"You're busy," Kara finished for him. "I get it. I'm on my way." A weary sigh escaped her as she headed in that direction. This made the third armed robbery that night. It was as if every criminal in the city had gone crazy. She might have had more strength and endurance than the average human, but at the pace events had been progressing, she had reached the limits of it and was exhausted. She was relieved when at last all the crimes in progress had been taken care of and she was finally able to go home and collapse into bed.

The next morning, the work resumed, this time more along the lines of what had become typical for herself and her brother and the team at STAR Labs. Barry arrived from a crime scene with a blood sample taken from the victim, who had died of anaphylaxis. Caitlin took the sample into her lab to test it and determine exactly what had caused the victim- one Doctor Linsday Kang's- death.

"Death by apitoxin," she proclaimed a few minutes later, reemerging from her lab with test results in hand.

"Honeybee venom," Wells clarified, Kara suspected mostly for her benefit.

"Bees," Cisco muttered. "Why did it have to be bees?" When everyone turned to look at him, he added, "Y'all, I don't do bees. Ain't nobody got time for bees."

"When a honeybee stings, its stinger is literally torn from its abdomen and it dies," Wells put in, clearly with the intent of steering the conversation back to the matter at hand.

"But there were no stingers in the body," Barry said. "And no dead bees in the car."

"A honeybee can only deposit point one milligrams of apitoxin when it releases its stinger," Caitlin spoke up.

"And yet Ms. Kang was found with enough venom in her system to kill a herd of elephants," Wells pointed out. Kara listened to this back and forth in silence, finding that she had nothing to contribute. "It appears that not only is a metahuman controlling these bees, but also increasing their toxicity."

"Bees communicate by releasing pheromones," Barry said. "Maybe this meta's controlling them through secretion?"

"Anyone want to join me in getting a beekeeper suit?" Cisco asked.

"I'm pretty sure I can outrun a bee," Barry replied dismissively.

"Well, just don't run into a lake," a familiar voice said, and they all turned to see Felicity standing in the doorway of the Cortex. "Bees will wait for you to come up for air and _then_ they'll sting you. Discovery channel. Turns out there's a _lot_ to discover."

"Felicity, what are you doing here?" Barry asked, voicing the question on everyone's mind.

"Can you guys come outside for a sec?" Felicity asked in response, gesturing behind her out the door.

"What exactly are we waiting for, Ms. Smoak?" Wells asked a few moments later as they all stood outside, looking up at the sky.

"Up there," Felicity replied, pointing up at a black speck moving through the sky.

"Is that a bird?" Caitlin asked.

"It's a plane," Cisco said. A moment later, the speck resolved itself into a man dressed in some kind of mechanical exosuit, drifting back and forth as he struggled to keep himself upright. Finally, the propulsion system on his suit went out completely and he dropped to the ground, landing on his hands and knees hard enough to chunks of broken pavement flying everywhere. Kara winced in sympathy. She remembered how hard landings had been to get the hang of.

"It's my boyfriend," Felicity said, smiling awkwardly.

_Boyfriend?_ Kara wondered, exchanging a confused glance with Barry. They'd both been sure that if Felicity was going to end up dating anyone, it would have been Oliver, and yet here was this guy, who not only had neither of them ever met but that they were also pretty sure Felicity had never mentioned before either.

_Oh well_, Kara told herself. _It's not like it's any of our business who Felicity dates._

"Hi," Ray Palmer said as he got to his feet, in a manner that was surprisingly cheerful for someone who had just dropped out of the sky. "I'm Ray." At that point, Kara sensed that whatever was going to happen next wasn't anything that she would have anything to contribute to, so she excused herself to find some work of her own to do, figuring they'd call her if or when they needed her.

She'd only just made it to the building that housed the Sentinel when her phone buzzed in her pocket three times- a short pulse, then a long one, then another short one. SOS. Kara felt her stomach twist. She knew exactly what that meant, and as she flew off, she wondered if the fear she felt every time she realized that Barry was in danger would ever go away.

Kara arrived at Barry's location- Folston Tech- in time to see him come bolting out of the building at full speed, a swarm of bees right behind him. In a moment of desperation, Kara dove, tackling Barry to the ground and putting herself between him and the swarm. Moments later, she felt hundreds of tiny impacts all over her body as the swarm dashed itself against her impenetrable skin.

"You okay?" she asked once it had flown off, getting to her feet and reaching out a hand to help Barry up.

"Yeah," Barry replied breathlessly. "Thanks to you."

"Dude, you are _so_ lucky that Kara got there when she did," Cisco told Barry when they'd all gathered in the Cortex to regroup and discuss their next move.

"Indeed," Wells agreed. "You are lucky to be alive, Mr. Allen."

"I was very specific that you _not_ die," Felicity told Barry angrily, and no one bothered to point out that he'd only _almost_ been killed. Kara noticed that there was an undercurrent of pain in Felicity's voice, beneath the anger, and wondered what exactly had happened in her life since the last time they had all been in contact with her that made the fear of losing someone she cared about- and she _did_ care about Barry, if only platonically- so real and raw for her.

"Yeah, that's a pretty big thing for her," Ray remarked jokingly, and Kara had to fight off the sudden desire to smack him upside the head.

"Cisco, what happened out there?" Barry asked, turning to him. "I followed your directions exactly."

"I'm sorry," Cisco replied. "The schematics that we had, they- they weren't up to date."

"What- they weren't up… to date," Barry stammered. "What do you mean? That's never happened before."

"What, you think Cisco was trying to get you killed?" Felicity asked jokingly.

"No, why would he do that?" Barry asked. "That doesn't make any sense."

"I know," Felicity said, a worried expression crossing her face. "That's why I was joking." Kara frowned. Something was obviously going on with Barry, but she had no idea what it could be.

"Barry," Wells spoke up, and he turned to look at him. "It's our job to protect you, and today we nearly failed, but that'll just serve as a warning for all of us to be more vigilant in the future." Barry nodded, and Kara took that as her cue to pull him aside for a private conversation.

"What is going on with you?" she demanded, rounding on him in the hall outside the Cortex.

"And don't say nothing!" she added when she saw him about to deny it, cutting him off mid sentence.

"I don't know how," Barry said after a long silence, presumably one wherein he gathered his thoughts, "but Harrison Wells… he's the man in yellow. He's the Reverse Flash."

"What?" Kara asked. "How is that possible? How did you even figure that out?"

"Last week, when I was going up against the Tricksters," Barry explained, "Wells talked me through how to phase, and… it was like he was speaking from experience. Like he'd done it before." Kara frowned, mulling that over.

"Have you told Cisco and Caitlin?" she asked. Barry shook his head.

"I know I should," he said. "But I'm not sure how they'd take it, or if they'd even believe me." Kara opened her mouth to reply, but just then Felicity poked her head out into the hall and called "Barry?"

"We're gonna be late for dinner," she said when they both turned toward her. Barry took a step in her direction, then stopped and turned back toward Kara.

"Go," she said, making a shooing gesture. "And have fun. We'll discuss this more later." Barry nodded, and then he was off.

After he was gone, Kara stood in the hall by herself for a long while, trying to wrap her head around what he had told her, until she heard screaming coming from inside the Cortex. She ran back into the room to see a bee, evidently a stowaway from the swarm, circling it while Cisco and Caitlin tried desperately to keep it at bay. Kara saw it start to head toward Wells, and she ran across the room and snatched it out of the air before it could sting him.

"Thank you," Wells said. "You saved my life." Kara nodded in acceptance of his thanks, though privately she wondered why she'd been so quick to leap to his defense. If he was the Reverse Flash like Barry said, then surely he could take care of himself.

"Let's see what makes this bee so poisonous," Cisco said, taking it from Kara and making a disgusted noise as he ran to the lab. A moment later, Barry appeared in the Cortex.

"What are you doing here?" Kara asked him. "Aren't you supposed to be at dinner with Felicity and Ray?"

"I got a distress signal from here," Barry replied, showing her his phone. "I thought there was an emergency."

"There was," Kara replied. "But I took care of it." Barry nodded, though he looked troubled.

Later, after Felicity and Ray had returned from dinner, the group gathered around while Cisco informed them of his findings-the bee that had hitched a ride on Barry's suit and nearly killed Wells was not a bee at all but was, in fact, a robot.

"This bot's got a 360 degree vision system," he told them excitedly. "I mean, we're talking multiple micro cameras, all coming from various angles at once, which means-"

"It can see all around the room at once," Ray interjected. "That is-"

"Amazing," Cisco said in unison with him.

"Disturbing," Caitlin protested.

"It's also next-gen hardware that's nowhere near the market," Wells pointed out.

"So we're not dealing with a metahuman?" Felicity asked.

"Just a mad scientist," Barry confirmed.

"Cisco, you said that the second victim, Bill Carlisle, was a robotics engineer," Wells said, back to business as usual. "Let's cross reference his former employers with those of Lindsay Kang."

"Allow me!" Felicity cut in, sitting down in front of the nearest computer before anyone could stop her. "Mama's been away from a keyboard for far too long." A few minutes later, they'd learned that both victims had worked at Mercury Labs and they were off to pay a visit to Doctor Tina Mcgee. From there, they learned that the person they were looking for was Brie Larvan, another former employee of Doctor Mcgee who had grudges against the first two victims and likely against Doctor Mcgee as well. With that out of the way, Kara and Barry were off to meet Felicity at Jitters, as per her request.

"Okay, so we found our queen bee," Barr told her as they walked in. "Brie Larvan. She's a roboticist. Joe is running a trace on her location, but so far nothing."

"Good," Felicity murmured, Kara assumed in response to the first half of Barry's statement rather than the latter half.

"Where's Ray?" she asked, glancing around.

"He's working on his suit with Cisco," Felicity replied.

"I like Ray," Barry put in. "He seems like a really good guy."

"He _is_ a good guy," Felicity agreed. "Just like Cisco. And Caitlin. Girl."

"Is that why you called me here?" Barry asked wearily.

"I know you're in a tricky situation, and I'm sure that Kara is helping as much as she can, but this is the time when you most need your _friends_ to have your back," Felicity said. "And how can they if you won't let them?"

"It's not that simple," Barry protested desperately. "What if Joe is right, and I tell them, and it backfires? Wells isn't just their boss, Felicity. He is their mentor. Their hero." He sighed and added, "My hero." Kara felt her heart break for her brother. It was clear what a compromising position his revelation about Wells had put him in.

"Look, it's-" Barry went on, cutting himself off. "I don't know what to do."

"When I first met Oliver," Felicity said, leaning forward and lowering her voice, "before I knew he was the Arrow, he would ask me to do weird things for him, like decrypt a bullet-ridden computer, or hack some company. And when I would ask him why, he would come up with these _ridiculous_ excuses. And I always knew he was lying, but I would… help him anyway. Do you know why?"

"Why?" Barry asked.

"Because I knew that Oliver was a good person," Felicity said. "With a good heart. Cisco and Caitlin, they're no different." Barry nodded, and Kara saw the tension in his posture ease, if only a little. She was happy to see that he'd found even a modicum of clarity and comfort, but, as was all too often the case with them, it was soon lost in the chaos of their lives. Brie Larvan's bees attacked again, and this time their target was Doctor Mcgee. Knowing that Larvan must have been controlling the swarm remotely, Felicity was able to track her down, and they split off, Kara going to protect Doctor Mcgee, Barry to stop the attack at its source.

Kara reached Mercury Labs in time to see the swarm start to smash through Doctor Mcgee's office window.

"Kara, get ready for a lot of incoming," Felicity said in her comm, and suddenly the swarm was heading towards her.

"Okay," she shouted back, turning her back on the swarm and flying off, forcing it to chase her. "Now what?"

"Get to the ocean," Cisco answered. "If the bots follow you into the water, their electronics will fry."

"Got it," Kara replied, and headed that way. A few minutes later, she flew out over the water and angled herself downward, hitting the surface a moment later, slicing through the water like a thrown spear. All around her, the members of the swarm hit the water, one by one, and fried, sparking as they died. Kara left them floating there and swam back to the surface and then launched herself into the sky once more, heading back to STAR Labs. On the way there, she heard Barry over the comms- "Brie's restrained. Call CCPD."- and couldn't resist cheering out loud. Even with all of the issues Barry was having at the moment, they'd still managed to band together and stop yet another person of ill intent from terrorizing the city. There really was something to be said for teamwork.


	27. The Face of the Enemy

Later, after the CCPD had arrived and taken Brie Larvan into custody, Barry went to his lab to take care of any final paperwork relating to her case. He'd been working for a while when he heard a knock at the door.

"Doctor Mcgee," he said when he turned and saw her standing in the doorway, surprise creeping into his voice.

"May I come in?" she asked, which seemed a bit odd since the door was open, but Barry decided not to question it.

"Yeah, of course," he replied, shifting in his chair. "What can I do for you?"

"I wanted to apologize," Doctor Mcgee said. "I should have listened to you when you warned me about Brie. Perhaps next time I _will _take the CCPD's offer of protection.

"After we lost your tachyon prototype, I can understand why you were hesitant to trust us," Barry admitted.

"Thank you," Doctor Mcgee replied with a small smile and a slight nod, and turned to leave.

"Can I ask you something?" Barry asked before she could, getting up from his chair. She stopped and turned to look at him questioningly.

"I couldn't help but notice some tension between you and Doctor Wells," he went on.

"That's all in the past," Doctor Mcgee assured him.

"Do you mind if I ask what happened between you two?"

"I ask myself that question all the time. Fifteen years ago, Harrison Wells and I were thick as thieves. We were promising young scientists in Starling City. He was such a kind man. Then everything changed after Tess died."

"They were gonna get married," Barry remembered. Doctor Mcgee nodded.

"I understand how grief can change a person, but this was more than that," she said. "It was like, after that day, Harrison Wells became a completely different person." There was a long pause, then she said, "Good day" and turned to leave once more.

"Bye," Barry replied, and then she was gone, leaving him alone to mull over what she had told him. It seemed that now he could pinpoint the exact moment at which Harrison Wells had become the Reverse Flash. The only question that remained was how exactly that had happened.

He was still pondering that when he went to Jitters to say goodbye to Felicity and Ray before they went home to Starling City, and he was pondering it when he returned to his lab afterwards. It was still on his mind when he talked to Joe and Kara about revealing the truth to Cisco and Caitlin- as per Felicity's advice- and it remained in his thoughts as they came up with a plan for how best to do that. It was even still at the forefront of his mind when the time came to set that plan in motion, though he knew it would soon be overshadowed by everything else they would have to deal with.

"All right, all right, who's ready for some karaoke?" Cisco asked, walking into the lab with Caitlin in tow. He sang the last word of his sentence, and Barry winced, suddenly regretting using that as the pretense to get them to meet him here, because they seemed genuinely excited about it, and now here he was, about to ruin not only their night but possibly their lives as well. At the very least, their view of Wells as a good man and a hero would be forever shattered.

"We're not going to karaoke, are we?" Caitlin asked when Joe and Kara stepped into view, both of them grim faced.

"No," Barry replied, and he could hear that his tone of voice was just as grim as the expressions on Kara and Joe's faces. Gesturing toward his investigation board, he added, "This is everything we know about the Reverse Flash. I've been collecting information on him for a long time." Walking toward it, he went on, "And this is everything we know about Doctor Wells" and pulled down the sheet in question, the very same one that he and Joe had been studying before the Trickster's attack the week before.

"I don't understand," Caitlin said. "What do Doctor Wells and the Reverse Flash have to do with each other?"

"They're the same person," Barry replied.

"That's impossible," Caitlin protested, shaking her head.

"Look, Caitlin," Barry said. "It took me a long time to believe it too, but it's him."

"He's right," Kara put in. "Listen to him."

"Doctor Wells is a speedster?" Caitlin asked skeptically. "He's paralyzed."

"Is he though?" Joe spoke up.

"And why would he have tried to kill Barry when he was a kid?" Caitlin went on. "It doesn't make any sense." Apparently noticing that Cisco had been silent this entire time, she rounded on him and demanded, "Cisco. Say something."

"I've been having dreams," Cisco mumbled in reply. "Mostly at night, but sometimes during the day." There was a far off look in his eyes, like he was reliving some kind of trauma. Barry found himself glancing over at Joe and Kara, trying to gauge their reactions, wondering if they were as troubled by the direction this seemed to be going as he was.

"But they don't really feel like dreams," Cisco went on. "They… they feel real."

"What happens in these dreams?" Barry dared ask, though he couldn't escape the feeling that he knew what the answer would be.

"Doctor Wells is the Reverse Flash," Cisco replied. "And… he kills me."


	28. Hunting Down the Truth

Six months after that Harrison Wells was the Reverse Flash, their investigation into him had gotten nowhere, which meant it was time for a change of tactics.

"Joe thinks we should start over from the beginning," Barry told Kara over the phone while she was on her lunch break at work one day.

"Which means what, exactly?" she asked.

"Doctor Mcgee told me that after the car accident that killed his fiancee, it was like Wells became a completely different person," Barry replied. "So Joe and Cisco are headed to Starling City to see what they can find out about the accident."

"Ah," Kara said. "And I assume you'll be running point with Eddie on any cases that come up while Joe's gone?"

"Uh huh," Barry replied, with a rustling on the other end of the call that suggested he was nodding to himself as he spoke.

"Ok," Kara said. "Well, tell them to say hi to the team over there if they see them. And keep me in the loop."

"Will do," Barry replied.

"About your cases too," Kara clarified. "Not just whatever happens with Wells."

"Right," Barry said. "Got it." Then he hung up, leaving Kara to her thoughts and her work as her lunch break drew to a close.

A few days later, Kara heard from Barry again, in regards to her request that he keep her in the loop- he was after a shapeshifting meta named Hannibal Bates, who was responsible for a string of robberies wherein the suspect pleaded innocent despite having been caught on camera committing the crime.

"Wells and Caitlin warned me that I can't let him touch me while I'm out as the Flash because then we run the risk of him exposing my identity," he said. "Not to mention that we don't know if he would absorb my abilities when he took on my appearance. I think it's probably safe to assume that same thing goes for you as well."

"Got it," Kara said. "Hands off the metahuman. If I happen to run into him, that is."

"Hands off the metahuman," Barry agreed. "But yeah, just keep an eye out. Anyway, Eddie and I are about to go and talk to Bates' grandmother, so I will let you know if we learn anything."

"Alright," Kara replied, and this time it was her turn to end the call, and as she shoved her phone into her pocket and went about her day, she wondered if she should be troubled by the fact that over the last few days, she and Barry had talked over the phone much more than they had in person. After a moment's reflection, however, she decided that the answer was no, since they'd both had a lot going on lately, not to mention that Kara had been keeping her distance from STAR Labs as much as possible over the last six months, since she wasn't sure how much she could stand to be around Wells, knowing his secret, and not confront him about it, and she hadn't wanted to push her luck. If he found out that they were onto him, then all of their hard work would have been for nothing, and Kara didn't want to be the one responsible for ruining it.

First thing the next morning, Barry came charging into the bullpen just as Kara was sitting down at her desk, startling her with his sudden appearance.

"Barry?" she asked, noticing the panicked expression on his face. "What's wrong?" Instead of answering, Barry just jerked his head toward the file room.

"I need your help," he said once Kara had followed him inside.

"Yeah, I gathered that," she replied dryly. "With what?"

"When Eddie and I went to talk to Bates' grandmother last night," Barry said, "it turned out to be Bates pretending to be her, and when he realized that we were onto him, he ran off. At some point during the chase, he must have managed to get a hand on Eddie, and then he…" He trailed off.

"He what?" Kara prompted.

"He killed two cops," Barry said. "While wearing Eddie's face. So now Eddie's about to be put on trial for murder, and he'll go to prison for a crime he didn't commit unless we find some way to prove his innocence."

"Alright," Kara said. "So what do you need from me?"

"I need you to put your investigative skills to use," Barry replied. Then, a moment later, apparently as an afterthought, he added, "Please. Just dig up any information you can on Hannibal Bates. Look for anything that might clear Eddie's name."

"Okay," Kara said, nodding.

"And keep me updated!" Barry called as he headed for the door, and then he was gone. The next time Kara saw him, he was acting strangely. Not only did he seem to have forgotten all about the whole ugly mess with Eddie, but when she reminded him about it, he seemed utterly unconcerned by the fact that Eddie would go to prison for a crime he didn't commit unless they managed to catch Hannibal Bates, which was utterly unlike him. She called Caitlin to find out the cause of Barry's odd behavior, as she still wasn't sure if she wanted to risk stepping foot in STAR Labs. Caitlin told her that the reason Barry had been acting so strangely was because, at some point after he'd asked Kara to look into Bates, he'd had a run in with the person in question, who'd knocked him out and taken his place.

"Thankfully, this didn't happen while Barry had the Flash suit on," she said. "And Wells caught onto him before he did any lasting damage. And because of this, we now know that Bates can't take on someone's abilities when he takes on their appearance."

"So, hands _on_ the metahuman," Kara surmised.

"Hands on the metahuman," Caitlin agreed.

"Alright," Kara said. "Thanks Caitlin."

"Anytime," Caitlin replied. "Though I'm not sure why you've been avoiding STAR Labs lately."

"I haven't been _avoiding_ STAR Labs," Kara lied. "I've just been too busy to visit lately." Then she hung up before Caitlin could interrogate her further and catch her in her lie.

The next time she heard from Barry, it was from the _real_ Barry, who told her that Caitlin had developed a serum that would neutralize Bates' shapeshifting ability, and that it, in combination with whatever information Kara had been able to find on him, might just be enough to clear Eddie's name. She gladly sent along everything that she had gathered, eager for them all to be able to put this whole mess behind them.

The next time Barry got in touch with her, a few days later, it was to let her know that Joe and Cisco had returned from Starling City with further evidence not only that Harrison Wells was the Reverse Flash, but also that the Wells they had been working alongside for the last year may not have been the real Harrison Wells at all, which seemed to be a recurring theme lately. Armed with this knowledge, Barry and the team- minus Wells, for obvious reasons- planned to explore a previously secret room they had found in STAR Labs following Joe and Cisco's return. Kara wished him luck and bade him be careful, and she could only hope that he and the others would be safe.


	29. The Trap

Kara knocked on the door of the West house feeling aphrensive. Barry had asked her to meet him and the team there after their little misadventure exploring the secret room they'd found, and she found herself dreading whatever awaited them all now. She was left with her thoughts for only a moment before Barry answered the door and waved her inside.

"For three very smart people, that was really stupid," Joe was saying to Barry, Caitlin, and Cisco as Kara entered the house. "What if Wells had caught you in that…" He trailed off.

"Time vault," Cisco supplied, noticing his struggle to find the right term for the room they'd found.

"Thank you," Joe said.

"Okay, I know we've seen a lot this past year, but time travel?" Eddie asked skeptically, making Kara flinch with surprise, noticing his presence for the first time. Somehow, when Barry had asked her to meet him and the team here, she hadn't realized that, this time around at least, "the team" included Eddie.

"I did it," Barry said. "Or will do it, I mean."

"Excuse me?" Eddie asked.

"One of the two speedsters in Barry's house the night the Reverse Flash tried to kill him when he was a kid was Barry," Cisco answered. "I mean, the Flash. He was there, which means that one day, in the future, Barry will travel in time to that night."

"Okay," Eddie said, though he still sounded skeptical.

"Actually, I wasn't talking about that," Barry spoke up. I… kind of _already_ time traveled. By accident."

"What?" Joe asked.

"I was running to try and stop a tsunami-" Barry said.

"When was that?" Caitlin interjected.

"A few weeks ago," Barry said. Turning to Cisco, he added, "Right before you started having those dreams."

"Oh, you mean the ones where Wells uses his superspeeding hand to shred apart my heart?" Cisco asked sarcastically. "Those?"

"Yes," Barry said. "Right. So, what if they're not dreams?"

"What else could they be?" Caitlin asked.

"Memories," Barry replied.

"I'm not following," Joe put in.

"All right, well, what if, that day, Cisco found out that Wells is the Reverse Flash, and then Wells killed him?" Barry asked. "But when I ran back a day, I changed the timeline so that event never happened."

"If it never happened, how can Cisco remember it?" Joe asked, voiceing the question on Kara's mind before she could.

"I don't know," Barry replied. "I don't _know_, but I think the important thing is, he does." There was a long pause, then he said, "Guys, I think I have a really terrible idea." Everyone looked at him curiously, and he filled them in on the plan he'd just come up with to find some way to access Cisco's memories of the alternate timeline.

"Somewhere in his subconscious is the key," he said.

"The key to what now?" Joe asked.

"Definitively proving, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Wells is the Reverse Flash," Barry replied.

"And how do we do that? " Caitlin asked.

"By getting him to confess to trying to kill me when I was a kid," Barry said. After the explanation was over, Kara pulled him aside.

"Do you need me for this?" she asked. Barry shook his head.

"We'll use whatever information we get from this to make a plan for our next move," he said. "I'll fill you in then."

"Alright then," Kara replied, and went on her way.

Some hours later, she stood in the room the held the containment field meant to trap the Reverse Flash- which they now knew had never held him at all- listening while Barry recapped what they had learned Cisco's dreams for those who hadn't been present and they all discussed the plan for what they did with that information.

"I just talked to Doctor Wells," Caitlin said, entering the room. "He's attending a lecture downtown, won't be back until five."

"Alright, Cisco, you know that when he gets here you need to be working on the trap so that he sees you set off the hologram," Barry said, turning to the person in question, who nodded.

"Hold on, isn't that when everything went all-"Joe cut in.

"Kali Ma Temple of Doom," Cisco finished for him. "Yeah. That definitely happened, but this time I'm ready for him. I originally designed the force field to keep a speedster from getting out." He stepped into the center of the trap and went on, "But now I've reversed it. Now, it won't let one in." He tapped something on his cell phone screen, and the force field switched on with a buzzing sound. He beckoned to Barry, who gestured for everyone to back up and then charged at the trap in a flash of yellow lightning. A moment later he reappeared off to the side, slamming into a metal cabinet with a loud _clang_ and then falling to the ground.

"Barry!" Caitlin and Kara cried in unison, running over to him.

"Are you okay?" Kara asked. Barry nodded.

"It works," he groaned as Kara and Caitlin helped him to his feet.

"Okay," Cisco said. "As long as I'm inside, Wells won't be able to get near me."

"And I'll be in the Cortex watching and recording everything that happens," Caitlin said.

"And me?" Kara asked. "Where do you want me?"

"Circling the building from the air and keeping an eye on things," Barry replied. "We'll need you as backup in case everything else goes wrong." Kara nodded and made for the front entrance, the sound of her boot heels striking the concrete floor as she went seeming to echo ominously, the statcatto tap of a soldier's march.

Once outside, she leaped into the air and began her task of watching over STAR Labs, banking occasionally to keep herself in a wide loop above the building, feeling like nothing so much as a hawk circling prey. She had to keep reminding herself that nothing she was doing was nearly so predatory as all that. She continued in her slow, careful loop over STAR Labs, keeping an eye on the people and cars passing by below and, so far, spotting nothing out of the ordinary, nor anything that indicated danger.

Kara had long since lost track of how long she'd been circling when she felt her comm buzz in her ear.

"Barry?" she asked, pulling up suddenly.

"Kara, listen," Barry said on the other end, sounding breathless, on the edge of panic. "It was a set up. Wells had us all under surveillance. He knew what we were doing all along."

"Oh no," Kara mumbled fearfully.

"And now he's going after Iris," Barry went on. "And I need your help to stop him before he hurts her."

"I'm on my way," Kara said, and pulled out of her circular course, angling herself downward until she was directly above the red streak that was Barry, following him into danger as she had so many times over the last year. They ended up on the bridge across from the stadium just as the Reverse Flash was about to vibrate his hand through Iris' chest, the very same method by which he had killed Cisco in his memories of the alternate timeline. Barry charged toward him, Kara just behind, and he disappeared in a flash of red lightning, taking Eddie with him. Iris fell to her knees, and let out a startled yelp when Barry moved in front of her.

"Hey Iris, it's okay, it's me," Barry told her soothingly, vibrating his voice so that she wouldn't recognize it, kneeling in front of her and grabbing her arms to ground her.

"He took him," Iris said breathlessly, trying to pull away from Barry and run after Eddie and the Reverse Flash. "The man in yellow. He took Eddie."

"I promise I will find him okay?" Barry replied, pushing her back, clearly desperate to keep her from throwing herself into danger.

"What is _happening_?" Iris asked, glancing back over her shoulder as Kara touched down on the bridge behind her.

"Just go home!" Barry cried instead of answering her, getting to his feet. "Don't say anything to anyone. I swear to you, I will bring Eddie back, alright?"

"Wait, stop!" Iris said, grabbing his hand as he turned away. Electricity crackled between them,and Iris jerked her hand back in shock and pain.

"Barry," Kara heard her murmur breathlessly as the person in question vanished in a bolt of yellow lightning.


	30. Confrontation

For several long, tense moments, Iris stood staring in the direction Barry had disappeared in, one hand held out as if to reach for him. Kara found herself holding her breath, waiting for the moment that Iris would turn around and confront her for her role in recent events.

"What the hell is happening?" Iris demanded a moment later, turning on her heel to face Kara.

"It's… a long story," Kara replied. She kept her face turned away from Iris as she spoke. She couldn't disguise her voice the way Barry could, and she didn't wear a hood and mask that cast her face into shadow that would conceal her identity the way Oliver did. As astute and sharply observant as Iris was, she was sure that she would recognize her at any moment, and she thought it best to prolong that moment for as long as possible.

"I've got time," Iris said sharply, settling into a confrontational posture and crossing her arms in front of her chest.

"The man in yellow…" Kara said, trailing off for a moment before she found the right words and went on, "we call him the Reverse Flash, and he, um… he's from the future. Centuries in the future, in fact. His real name is Eobard Thawne."

"Thawne?" Iris asked. "Like Eddie?" Kara nodded.

"Turns out Eddie is an ancestor of his," she said.

"So then why kidnap him?" Iris asked.

"Insurance, I'd guess," Kara replied with a shrug. "You see, we set a trap for the man in yellow, but he knew about it the whole time, and it failed. Then he went after you, and when Barry stopped him from killing you, he took Eddie in order to keep Barry so busy trying to find him and bring him home like he promised you he would that he won't be able to interfere with whatever he's planning next." This was mostly conjecture, but Kara suspected no less true for being that. She'd become quite adept at drawing conclusions quickly, sometimes with very little information to work with.

"You know," Iris said after a long pause, "it's kind of rude to not look at someone when you talk to them." Kara chanced turning her head toward her, but kept it tilted downwards, trying to keep her face hidden behind the curtain of her hair. Again, she wished for a hood like Oliver's to cast her face in shadow. Idly, distractedly, she wondered if she should ask Cisco to add one to her suit for her once this was all over. Granted, people didn't often see her up close like this, but it couldn't hurt to be prepared in case it ever happened.

Iris' sudden gasp interrupted her idle musings.

"Kara?" she cried. "_Kara?!_" Kara winced.

"I suppose there's no more point in keeping up the charade anymore, is there?" she asked, tossing her hair back and facing Iris full on for the first time as Supergirl. Iris just shook her head.

"You're Supergirl?" she asked, Kara suspected more because she was still trying to wrap her mind around it than because she actually needed confirmation. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"If I had, would you have believed me?" Kara countered. "Would you have believed that Kara Allen, reporter for the Central City Sentinel, was a superhero?"

"I suppose not," Iris conceded, shaking her head. After a pause, she went on, "Wait, if you're Supergirl, then you've known that Barry was the Flash this _whole time_. Why didn't you tell me _that_?" To this, Kara could not think of an answer that Iris would believe or find acceptable, so she defaulted to the same one that Felicity gave to anyone who asked her who the Arrow was- "It's not my secret to tell."

"I guess I can't argue with that," Iris said. "Though, _believe me_, I want to…" She trailed off, turning back to stare in the direction Barry had run off in once more, as if she thought she could make him appear with Eddie in tow by doing so.

"Barry and I are going to have a lot we need to talk about when I see him again," she said, mostly to herself, and Kara could only nod in response.


	31. Diversions

Barry was exhausted. It had been a week since Wells had taken Eddie, and despite searching the city from end to end and then back again- he from the ground and Kara from the air- they had found nothing, no clue, no _hint_ of where either Wells or Eddie could be. He and Joe had fabricated a lie about Eddie taking some personal time when Singh had started asking questions about his whereabouts, but there was no telling how long that would last. Somehow, Barry doubted that that particular lie would hold up under serious scrutiny.

To make matters worse, Barry couldn't devote nearly as much of his own time to the search for Eddie and Wells as he wanted to- there was a case involving a string of gold robberies that Singh wanted him and Joe on, and with Eddie gone their workload on said case had nearly doubled. He wanted so desperately to keep the promise he had made to Iris to bring Eddie home, but, more and more, it was beginning to seem impossible.

Not too long after leaving his lab for the day, Barry was at STAR Labs with Cisco when their conversation about the latter's decision to keep the cameras Wells had used to spy on them and repurpose them was cut short by an emergency alert.

"Central City Gold Reserve's under attack," Cisco said, reading off the screen.

"Gold?" Barry asked. "That's the case Singh wants us on. I'll be right back." He turned to run out of the room, but before he could, Kara walked in, announcing, "And I'm coming with you."

"Kara, this is a police matter," Barry protested. "I can handle it on my own." Kara just shook her head.

"But you're not going out there as a member of the CCPD, are you?" she countered. "We're supposed to do this _together_, Barry. It's more important now than ever that we don't separate." Barry sighed, knowing that there'd be no swaying Kara on this. They called her the Girl of Steel for more reasons than just her superstrength and her impenetrable skin.

"All right," he said. "Let's go." They arrived at the gold reserve a few minutes later in the midst of a hail of gunfire as the gold reserve guards exchanged shots with a man wearing a metal mask and armed with a machine gun.

"You picked a bad day for this, pal," Barry muttered as he and Kara strode forward to confront him. All of a sudden, there was a ringing in Barry's ears, and images flashed through his mind of needles and men in surgical masks, their faces hidden in shadow. He crumpled to his knees, overwhelmed by intense, crippling fear, and in the periphery of his vision he could see Kara and the man in the mask do the same. Then the man in the mask got to his feet, turned tail, and fled, and the moment he was gone the psychological attack abated.

"What was that?" Barry muttered, awed and terrified.

"Your eye movement is normal," Caitlin informed him in the med bay back at STAR Labs later, shining a light in his eyes to make sure. "No signs of neurological damage." She had already examined Kara, who hovered nearby, and determined that the same was true of her.

"Do you think the thief might have been a metahuman who put the whammy on you guys or something?" Cisco asked, glancing between Barry and Kara, clearly intending the question for either of them. It was Barry who chose to answer.

"I don't know," he said. "When Rainbow Raider got in my head, all I felt was anger, but this was _not_ that. This was just… overwhelming fear."

"Hmmm," Cisco said thoughtfully. "Well, it looks like when you guys went down, the thief got disoriented too."

"Maybe we both got whammied," Barry replied.

"Then you know how it feels." Iris' voice came from the doorway. Barry turned to see her standing there, an angry, tired expression on her face.

"Hi Barry," she said, stepping the rest of the way into the room. "Or should I say the Flash." Not sure what to do or say or even what to think, all Barry could do in that moment was silently panic. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Kara and the others file one by one out of the room.

"Wait, how did you find out?" he asked Iris once they were alone, finally managing to find his words.

"When I touched the Flash the other night, I felt a jolt of electricity," Iris replied. "The only other time I have ever felt anything like that was when you were in a coma after the accident." She laughed quietly to herself and added, "I can't believe I didn't figure it out sooner."

"I can only imagine how angry you are," Barry said apologetically.

"I'm not angry, Barry," Iris replied. "I'm just disappointed."

"Okay," Barry said, because he didn't know what else to say, puzzled by Iris' words.

"Does Eddie know?" Iris asked.

"Yes," Barry replied. "He does."

"Is that why he got kidnapped?" Now Iris sounded like she was about to cry, and Barry had never felt more helpless.

"No," he said. "I don't know why Wells took Eddie. I-"

"Doctor Wells is the man in yellow?" Iris interjected.

"Everything he's been doing, helping me, it was all a lie," Barry explained. "Wells killed my mom."

"Is he going to kill Eddie?" Iris asked.

"No, he's not," Barry said, with as much conviction as he could muster. "I'm going to get Eddie back, I swear."

"Yeah, the Flash said the same thing," Iris muttered.

"Look, Iris, you have to believe me," Barry said. "I- There were so many times I wanted to tell you. You were the first person I wanted to tell, but everything started getting crazy, and I thought maybe Joe was right and I shouldn't say-"

"Wait, wait, wait," Iris interjected. "You're telling me that my dad _knew_, and he told you not to tell me?"

"He was trying to protect you," Barry said. "We both were."

"Well, maybe it's time you both stopped," Iris said angrily, and then she turned and marched out of the room. Barry barely had any time to get his wits back about him before it was back to work, heading out with Kara after the man in the mask after he made a move on the transport truck headed to the gold reserve's Coast City vault. The strange psychological attack that had stopped them the last time they had faced him didn't come this time, and they were able to take him down. When Joe unmasked him, he turned out to be General Eiling, much to everyone's shock. Once they took back to STAR Labs, further investigation revealed that Eiling was not mentally present or even technically conscious. Rather, his mind and body were being controlled by a gorilla named Grodd that he had been conducting experiments on before the particle accelerator explosion, the dark matter from which having caused Grodd to develop psychic powers. From there, they followed a lead from Iris about reports of an animal in the sewers to determine Grodd's whereabouts. Soon after, Barry found himself wading through the sewers with Joe and Cisco, looking for him. As they followed his trail, they found evidence that he was evolving, growing more intelligent, and in the same moment that Joe theorized that that probably meant that he was growin in size as well, he attacked them, and though Barry tried to help fight him off, but he was incapacitated by the same type of psychic attack that had taken him and Kara out the first time they had face Eiling, and when he came to, Joe was gone. By the time he made it back to STAR Labs, he was determined to find him, no matter the cost.

"I will search every inch of that sewer if I have to," he said.

"And this time, I'm coming with you," Kara spoke up, her voice firm and insistent, leaving no room for argument.

"And what happens if you find them?" Caitlin asked. "What happens if Grodd takes over your minds the same way he did with Eiling?"

"Can you guys build us something?" Barry asked. "Some kind of tech so that he can't get in our heads?"

"I don't know," Cisco replied. "Maybe if Doctor Wells were here…" He trailed off.

"We'll figure something out," Caitlin spoke up, casting a scolding look in Cisco's direction, and off they went. By the time Barry and Kara went to check on them, a little while later, they had something that they thought might work.

"Anti telepathy strips," Cisco explained, handing a pair of headsets to Barry and Kara. "They use magnetic resonance to neutralize any foreign neurological stimulus."

"So they'll protect them from being mind controlled?" Iris asked.

"That's the hope," Caitlin answered. "But we have no way of knowing if they actually work."

"They'll work," Barry insisted. Behind him, a monitor beeped, punctuating his sentence.

"The tracker we planted on Grodd just went online," Cisco said, studying the monitor. "We have his location." Barry nodded, and he and Kara were suited up in an instant.

"Iris," Barry said before he and Kara left. "I want you to know that all the times I imagined you being here, it was _not_ like this."

"Get my dad back," Iris told him, her voice barely louder than a whisper. Barry nodded determinedly, and he and Kara headed out.

"Guys, what's your ETA?" Cisco asked over comms as they came to the spot where the tracker told them Grodd was.

"We're in position," Kara answered, following Barry's lead in putting on the headsets Cisco had made.

"Wait for my signal," Cisco told them. There was a long pause, then he said, "The steam's working. Grodd's on the move. Hit it!" Barry nodded and raced into the sewers, heading towards Grodd, who Cisco had maneuvered to the precise distance away from him necessary to employ a supersonic punch against him, Kara following behind as backup to engage Grodd in case the punch didn't work. As they'd feared might happen, the supersonic punch failed to have any effect on Grodd, and when Kara came in for the attack, he swatted her aside like she was nothing more than a bothersome fly. She smashed against the wall of the tunnel with a cry of pain, and the anti telepathy strip was knocked off her head, smashing against the ground in a burst of sparks.

"Go!" Barry shouted at her, gesturing frantically back up the tunnel. "I've got this. Go!" Kara hesitated for a moment, but then seemed to realize that she'd have no chance against Grodd without her headset, and finally turned and set off, back in the direction of STAR Labs. Barry barely had time to breathe a sigh of relief that she was out of danger before Grodd was grabbing him by the ankles and throwing him through a wall. He landed hard on a set of train tracks, narrowly missing the third rail, his headset thankfully undamaged by the impact. Barry struggled to his feet just as Grodd came charging through the hole he'd just made. He heard the rumble of an oncoming train in the distance, and he stood in the center of the track, waiting for Grodd to come after him, then leaped out of the way just as the train came barrelling down the tunnel, carrying Grodd away with it. Then he went to find Joe and bring him home.

Later, back at STAR Labs, Barry caught up with Iris after she'd had a talk with her father in the med bay.

"I don't even know you anymore," Iris said, her thoughts very clearly still on their earlier conversations.

"Look, Iris," Barry replied, "even though you didn't know everything about my life this past life, that does not mean that you weren't a part of it. You were. Every single day. Every time I faltered or made a mistake, it was the thought of you that picked me up and kept me going. Without you, there wouldn't be the Flash." Iris smiled at that, just slightly.

"I've been thinking about you," she admitted. "About us. But I can't do that anymore. Eddie is the man that I live with, the man that I love, and he's still missing."

"I know," Barry said. "I'm gonna bring him back." Wondering how many times he was going to have to keep saying that, he dared add, "And after that?"

"I don't know," Iris replied, voice quiet. Barry nodded grimly. As disheartened as he was by that answer, it nevertheless left him more determined than ever to keep his promise to bring Eddie home.


End file.
